Cruciate Repair

Yesterday I had the opportunity to observe my dog Henry's cruciate repair at Veazie Veterinary Clinic. I work at a veterinary practice in central Maine but they do not perform orthopedic surgeries to repair such injuries. I used to live in the Bangor area and had heard good things of Veazie Vet and Dr. Cloutier. Most of our clients in the Augusta area that need orthopedic surgery are sent to southern Maine for repair while I decided to venture the other way and go north.


Henry's incision site

Let me start off by saying that everyone at Veazie Vet welcomed me into their practice with open arms. They provide the courtesy of allowing pet parents to observe the surgery on their pet. While not everyone may have the stomach to do so, I thought I have never seen such a surgery done. Sure I have seen my share of spay and neuters, growth removals and amputations at Windsor Vet but this was different and it was my own dog. I was immediately brought to the surgery room where I met the technicians and then brought upstairs to their break area. Carpeted and spacious with a full refrigerator, sink, counter-tops, microwave, coffee machine and then a second sitting area with a couple couches, a bookshelf for entertaining pet parents with novels, and high ceilings and lots of natural light. Dr. Cloutier and the staff allowed me to hang out in that area until it was time for Henry's surgery. They told me I could be as involved in Henry's surgery as I wanted to be.

I was taken to the kennel room where Henry was going to be kept, and like a champ he jumped right into his kennel and proceeded to lay down. Impressed they were by this, but a vet clinic is Henry's second home. Having had him since 2 days old and needing to be bottle fed every 2 hours, and then the house training phase, Henry spent a good 6 months or so of his life coming to work at Windsor with me. The technicians and Dr. asked if I'd like to hold Henry for the pre-med injections or blood draw etc. While everyone continued to reassure me I wasn't, I didn't want to be a burden or be in their way. So I left Henry in the kennel and asked them to just get me once he was on the table and ready to start surgery.

I nestled in to the corned of the couch and read my book. Heather, one of the licensed vet techs and one I've dealt with the most for Henry's pre-surgery stuff, was wonderful at checking in and had told me he was next, was medicated and we would be headed down soon. I was given the option to scrub in, gown up, and go right into the surgery room with Henry, but because I wanted to take a few pictures, I stayed outside by the viewing window which had better visibility of the surgery. Heather had an opening in her schedule so she stood with me and gave me a play by play as Dr. Cloutier performed a traditional cruciate repair.


Using the laser to make the incision. Very neat and clean

Cleaning out the partially torn ligament

 I felt very relaxed in the environment, having the technicians around, we laughed and joked about how it seems in our profession we always end up with the "problem pets".  But what better place to be in when we have pets that need chronic medical attention.


Adding the artificial ligament

I left while they were stitching up with leg and they were going to call me once he was recovered. Overall the surgery took about an hour or so and they called a little later to say he recovered peacefully, I was concerned about his recovery based off of how he had recovered from his neutering, more or less a bad trip. They use different drugs for sedation and anesthesia than we do at Windsor and he recovered swimmingly. Now that we have overcome the surgery we must approach our next hurdle of physical therapy and rehabilitation. I will keep you posted.