A border collie blows her other, and last, CCL.

On Saturday, October 15th, 2011, while running on the flat near the bank of the Bow River in the company of her owner and her friends, Brian Unger and Sheila Robinson, Eva (the EDB) blew out her left hind knee.  This was exactly 7 1/2 months after blowing her right hind knee–she had managed to make a complete recovery.

There followed, a week and two days later, the usual surgery performed by the usual veterinary surgeon, Dr. Bruce Rodger, and the usual clinic: Marda Loop.  According to Dr. Rodger the surgery went well, and certainly Eva seems to be recovering well, better in fact–so far–than the first time.  I hope to have the staples out by late next week, and to start doggy physical therapy shortly after.  She turns 12 in January, but I’m hoping that by the spring she’ll be either back to normal or very close to it.  This will be the last surgery she ever goes through.  If it gives her, and me, another 2 or 3 years of outdoor activity, and love, it will be worth it.

The EDB 90% recovered.

From March 2nd to July 31st–five months for a near-total recovery: the EDB is back again.

Five months of doggy physical therapy.  It was worth it.  It’s good to have her back.  Her improvement was so slow, so incremental, that at first I had doubts.  It took weeks to see noticeable improvement.  But now she’s largely back.  What’s still lacking?  Although she walks and runs normally, her trotting gait does not yet exhibit her previous flair.  And her stamina is reduced.  How much of the latter is due to age–now 11 1/2–I don’t know.

Would I give her the operation again, if, as is statistically likely, in one to three more years the other hind leg goes?  I doubt it.  The operation set her back at least two weeks, possibly four.  There’s a chance that she would recover without an operation–incredibly, there seems to be no serious, published study as to the effectiveness of the CCL operation, versus no operation at all.  I would think twice before putting a dog, near the end of her life span, again through that trauma.

But why worry about that, today?  Better to take her down to the river, as I’m about to do now, and throw a stick a stick into the Bow.  Better to enjoy with her the summer day, and remember St. Matthew’s advice: ‘Sufficient unto to the day is the evil thereof’.