Meet Cosita. She's a 9 year old bichon frise who acts more like she's 2 or 3. Her favorite things are blitzing around the house and yard, hiking in the mountains, stealing pencils to chew, and snuggling first thing in the morning. This picture was taken shortly after she rolled around in the freshly mowed lawn. She was so proud of herself!
Last Sunday she really wanted to go for a walk. After running between me and the door, dramatically flopping herself down on the bed, and staging a whining protest to her boring life, I decided to take her on a short hike. I opened the front door and she went racing out to the car. As soon as she leapt off of the porch steps I knew something was wrong. She started screaming and holding her rear right leg off of the ground. She was obviously in serious pain.
Our most favorite vet, Dr. Bagley, palpated her leg and diagnosed the injury as a severed ACL, or cruciate ligament. It exibited the "drawer" movement, where the knee actually separates from the bone below it and shifts back, much like the movement of a drawer. X-rays backed up the diagnosis. I was just glad to see there wasn't a bone tumor or anything like that. Surgery was scheduled for Friday.
After doing interminable amounts of research, and being frustrated as to the lack of anecdotal information on ACL repairs of small dogs, I decided to write a blog to document our experience. Hopefully someone else going through this will benefit from it.
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