OUCH! Cruciate Ligament Rupture Prevention and Repair

Marty and Laura tackle the painful topic of cruciate ligament ruptures in dogs. They talk causes, prevention, treatment and new research that’s giving hope to eradicating the painful condition specifically in Labrador Retrievers.

“Statistically, five to 10% of Labradors will end up with a cruciate tear,” Marty said, “although there's a lot of variables in that. Certain breeds like greyhounds and corgis, they don't tear cruciates. Sometimes it's the age of spaying or neutering, sometimes there's definitely differences within the line of dogs. So there's a lot of variables.

“If your dog is 3-legged lame (in the rear) and it's persistent, you should seek veterinary care. But you don't have to go in on emergency over a weekend or at night. Now, if it's a dangling fracture, you need to go in,” Marty noted, but a cruciate tear is not an emergency.

“You can have a flat out tear, you can have a fray, you can have a partial tear. Eventually a fray or a partial tear is going to turn into a full tear. And so you can see these degradations, these changes inside the cruciate ligament that we don't still fully understand or need to understand better, and we will, but at this point we don't really have a great understanding of some of these dynamics because there are so many differences.

“Spaying and neutering definitely has a relationship in a lot of large breed dogs with the severity and the likelihood of which they're going to develop cruciate disease. So we know if we spay or neuter dogs before skeletal maturity, which is somewhere between 15 and 18 months depending on the breed, we're going to increase their risk of torn cruciate. In Labradors that increases by 20%.”

https://puredogtalk.com/captivate-tag/cruciate-ligaments/

The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.