Poor Chiners has been having a horrible week.

Last Friday Matt and I took China to the vet to find out why she's been limping on her left hind every time she plays hard. She had x-rays done and the vet manipulated her knee joint to find that she has a partial tear of her ACL. In layman's terms, the tissue connecting her thigh and calf bone is torn. The vet must've really been manipulating that joint around for her diagnosis because she was gimping around that evening.

It's a hard decision whether or not to undergo surgery for an animal that really has no choice one way or another.. or a way of telling you what she wants. I feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility for her well-being. She's been through the last 6 years of my life together, which have been very rocky. I've had her since she was a pup and imaginging her in any sort of pain hurts me just as much as it would probably hurt her.

We've been trying to keep her contained and have been restricting her exercise for the past week to see how she would do. I've noticed some improvement and like any fool would do, I let her run around more once she looked better. This morning we went to the end of the street for her morning walk and she disappeared behind a hill to go potty. She was running pretty exhuberantly since she's been still on confinement (somewhat). Suddenly I heard a terrible yelp and she ran to me on 3 legs, shaking from nose to tail. I can only imagine the extent of the damage she did to that leg.. it was, of course, the same leg that had her knee torn. :(

She's been acting out since she's been confined.. she ate a whole bag of 'hot n spicy' beef jerky and a whole loaf of garlic bread that were on the kitchen counter while we were gone for dinner this past weekend. She hasn't done this since she was a puppy so it was a surprise to come home to that mess. Usually you can leave a full plate on the table and she won't even touch it for fear of her mom's wrath.

So with her injury this morning and the full scolding she got for eating food off the counter I've been feeling absolutely terrible. I'm pretty sure she's going to need surgery now to repair whatever is going on in her knee joint. I've made an appointment for this Wednesday afternoon at the Veterinary Surgical Associates to assess her injury. I went ahead and bought a rear end support leash that will help her get up and down and a dog ramp for my truck. Anything that will make life a little easier for her.

The option for the 'gold standard' of all ACL repair surgeries is called the TPLO procedure. This procedure runs between 3-5K depending on the extent of damage and is considered a 'bilateral' surgery, meaning a lot of dogs have to get it done on the other side as well. *sigh*

Can I tell you how much this all sucks? Well it does. Add in my depressing birthday coming up next week and we get the suckiest of all suckiest times I've had in a long time. There is no reason to celebrate.

p.s. I'm slightly amused by the google ads that have decided to appear for my current blog entries. Scroll down to view.