Cookie's Cruciate Pt 1 - Dec 16th 2018

On learning on Wednesday that Cookie has almost certainly damaged her Cruciate ligament I decided to do a blog piece about the whole experience. This is not because we have expertise in the subject and actually it's the total opposite as it's the first time we've been through this. The reason is because we know that we will get a huge amount of support and advice from our online friends who have huge knowledge and experience. The hope is that this will become a useful resource for people going through this in the future.

On Wednesday I took Cookie out for a walk in the morning. Nothing new, nothing different and we arrived back home without any drama, a routine morning amble.

On arriving back in the house Cookie wanted to go straight into the garden as is her way. She's usually hot and spends a few hours outside cooling down unless it's absolutely lashing down and then I try and deter her.

Wednesday was dry and bright so out she went and immediately decided she needed the toilet as she hadn't gone on her walk. Like many dogs she has this habit of spinning round before doing the deed and this is what she did on this occasion. As she performed her heffalump pirouette she suddenly yelped really loudly and held up her back right leg and kept it there.

I think everyone knows immediately when something serious has happened and it's one of those sinking moments that everybody dreads but also kind of expects, especially when living with a giant breed. The Vet was immediately called but I think before we arrived we pretty much knew what the diagnosis was going to be. It took him literally seconds to confirm the worst and said that he felt enough movement in the joint to be pretty confident our fears were correct.

A pain killing injection was given and he said that we needed to be referred and did we have a preference. I didn't particularly and fifteen minutes after we got back home Liverpool University small animal hospital called to book Cookie in for Monday.

So that's where we are at the moment. Cookie is booked in for Monday 17th Dec at 11.am and we will find out more about the actual damage and the procedure to come.

I have to admit that as soon as it happened my thoughts turned immediately to finances as this is going to be very costly. We are insured for Monty and Cookie but by a weird coincidence our renewal was due in November and I decided to change insurer as they had doubled our premiums. So our new policy with our new company started on November 2nd.....arghhhhh. After anxiously reading through the policy it stated that we had no cover for new conditions for 14 days from the start of the policy. That meant that we should be ok from the 16th but I always have a very cynical view of insurance companies, due to prior experiences. How they deal with this will be a big and very important part of the blog. Were we right to change? Are they a good company? Time will tell and we will of course update.

Once we posted about Cookie we began to get some great tips and advice as I was pretty sure we would. One of the first was a recommendation for a Help 'EmUp harness to aid moving Cookie and also assist her getting around both pre Op and post Op. At £100 it wasn't cheap and I'm sure if I shopped around I'd find different versions that were cheaper but the recommendation came from a trusted friend who had used it successfully and found it useful so that was good enough for me. I paid £8 for next day delivery and so far I have to say it's been excellent and really useful helping her out into the garden down the step. The harness is made by Orthopets https://www.orthopets.co.uk/mobility-solutions/help-emup/

I think it's true worth will become clear post op and getting Cookie to appointments by car.

Next time I'm looking about what preparation we'll need in the house for Cookie as she recovers and some of the advice we've been getting.