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I'm back from the vet hospital. They kept Lina, she can't come home until Friday. We saw two students -- a fourth year who conducted the initial exam, and a second year who assisted him -- and a surgeon. They were really nice to her. She was extremely freaked out, whining and shedding, but she did OK. I found something that seems to calm her pretty well: I stand over her, facing the same way, with her body between my legs, lean forward and scratch her head and chest. Maybe she feels protected? The only problem is that my back got tired from standing like that, but when I stood up, or tried to sit in front of her, she started whining again.

They said she tore the cranial cruciate ligament, inside the knee, and the joint is unstable. The tibia is able to move forward further than it's supposed to. I guess that's why she's been falling so much. Lately if she's rushing to get in or out the door, she'll slip and her back legs go right out from under her.

Apparently the delay between injury and treatment makes it likely that the meniscus (a cushion inside the knee) is also damaged. They said they could hear clicking in her knee which indicates problems with the meniscus. When I had TMJ surgery a few years ago, they said the meniscus on one side of my jaw was pretty badly damaged, but the other side wasn't so bad. I can still hear (well, mainly feel) clicking in my jaw sometimes, like if I'm on the air and have a long talkset, sometimes as I talk I can feel it go click-click-click just in front of my right ear.

There are 2 treatment options, the surgeon said that neither one is clearly "better" than the other. One is to add permanent sutures that stabilize the joint. In essence the sutures perform the function of the ligament. This way is less expensive but takes longer to heal. And if the dog is too active too soon, the sutures can be damaged and she'll be right back where she started.

The other way is to realign the bones to reduce stress on the joint. This is more expensive & also more drastic. It involves reshaping the tibia, and she'd have to have pins and a plate in the bone. But he said that as long as the bones heal properly, she would heal faster and would have a better chance of being back to normal.

He asked me if I had a preference between the two, which I appreciate, but good grief, I don't know enough about it to know which one is better. So I told him that before the injury she was in good health, pretty active for her age, and I wanted to do the one that would provide the fullest recovery.

They are going to do a radiograph (that means an X-ray, right?) to see if her bones would be a good candidate for leveling the tibia. If the tibial plateau is already fairly flat, then the bone reshaping wouldn't do much good. In which case they'd go with the sutures. They're going to call me this afternoon and let me know which surgery they want to do.

Georg and I had been planning a trip in the first week of Jan, to see his family on Staten Island, but we weren't sure if that would be too soon after the surgery. I asked the surgeon about it and he said that would be fine. Whichever surgery they choose, we're going to have to restrict her to a crate for weeks (!) with only short leash walks. The kennel will keep her inside a pen, so that will be restrict her movement sufficiently.

We also talked about physical therapy afterwards, and they gave me a handout which explains it in detail. I'm going to have to put ice packs on her knee, massage the knee, and do passive range of motion exercises. The student said that Lina is already showing slight atrophy from favoring that leg for the past month, so I think the physical therapy will be important. They also recommend a couple of clinics with underwater treadmills where she could do physical therapy, but I think that might be a bit excessive.

I had to pay a deposit of 50% of the highest estimate. Which deposit was $1,200. Aie! Well, that's not too far off from the estimate they gave me over the phone. And if they go with the suture method, I will have almost completely paid already.

Since I got back, Thirteen has seemed out of sorts but basically all right. She keeps pacing around the house, looking in every room, like she's hoping to find Lina. They're almost never separated so I knew it would be weird for her. She's probably feeling better now that I'm home and she's not totally alone.

In other news, the tree guy was supposed to come either today or tomorrow to cut up that fallen oak in our front yard. I thought I was going to be out all day, so I had told him that I would leave a check on the front porch. But I forgot. I hope he didn't come by, see that there wasn't a check, and leave. If he doesn't come today I'll call him this evening.