Well A few weeks ago I woke up and found Totem could not walk.  He stopped and laid down twice and only got halfway from the back of the yard.  I went and carried him the rest of the way inside.  I took him to the vet that morning and he had a completely torn cranial cruciate ligament, or the human equivalent of the ACL.  Great now I have a lame dog who needs surgery.  Nukka, Totem's sister has a partially torn CrCL.  She can walk, but limps after she gets up from sleeping and occasionally you can hear her knee popping as she walks.  Here is a video of Totem limping, and Nukka acting like she is not hurt.  She is a ham and always wanted to be on camera too...



The procedure to fix a torn CrCL for a large dog is pretty amazing.  Here is a link describing it in detail http://www.michvet.com/library/surgery_tplo.asp.  Basically they alter the angle of the bone at the knee. 




It also is not cheap surgery.  And from what all the vets have been telling me there is a 60% chance of the other leg needing the same surgery within two years.  Great two dogs, four hind legs, 4 potential expensive surgeries.  I hate asking for money, but people seem to be able to travel the world and get houses by asking for generous people to donate a few dollars.  So if you have a few dollars to spare for some large mutts, it would be appreciated.  There are some links on the right hand side.

Surgery

Well Totem got surgery a few weeks ago.  I got a call from the Michigan State Small Animal hospital and they said there was a cancellation and an opening for him to go in early.  I expected them to look at him and say yup he needs surgery, then take him home until the surgery.  I ended up leaving him there and they did it the next day.  When I got him 2 days later his knee looked pretty ugly.  It was all swollen and bruised.  That went away after a week, but he is still limping and I guess will for a few weeks or months.  There are more dog pictures here.  Here are some pictures of  what the xrays looked like.  These are not Totem,  but some I found off the internet.  He was big enough to have eight screws instead of six.