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I am glad you have a diagnosis. I hope you have your dog on a high quality, grain free food and joint supplements as well as Ester C. All of this helped my older dogs (who had sports injuries) immensely. With the kind of pain your dog is in you definitely need to be giving him nutritional support, anti-inflammatories and something for the pain. There are also harnesses you can buy to help support him when he walks. And as others have mentioned, you absolutely have to get the extra weight off of him because no matter what option you choose his recovery will be much more difficult with extra weight.
My dog Massie tore her CCL at age 10. My vet diagnosed it manually and then I took her to the UW vet school where they did x-rays and recommended the cheaper of the two surgeries you posted. At that time it was under $1000 (this was many years ago). I do not remember the degree of her tear but she was not limping as badly as your dog is now. It tore when she jumped about 3 inches off of the ground for the frisbee.
She had bilateral HD and had also had a hip replacement which was starting to wear out. She had a very difficult time recovering from the surgery and never really got back to 100% on that knee but she wasn't very strong to begin with because of her hips. In retrospect I don't think she was a great surgical candidate because of her HD. About a year later she got a partial tear in the other knee but I chose to treat that conservatively and it healed well. She died of cancer just short of age 12.
Chama had partial tears in both of her knees and I treated them both conservatively and they healed well but she did have arthritis when she got older. She was on 2 different kinds of joint supplements, Ester C and some herbs and homeopathy for her arthritis and all things considered she got around quite well. She also died of cancer at age 14 plus a few months.
My dog Massie tore her CCL at age 10. My vet diagnosed it manually and then I took her to the UW vet school where they did x-rays and recommended the cheaper of the two surgeries you posted. At that time it was under $1000 (this was many years ago). I do not remember the degree of her tear but she was not limping as badly as your dog is now. It tore when she jumped about 3 inches off of the ground for the frisbee.
She had bilateral HD and had also had a hip replacement which was starting to wear out. She had a very difficult time recovering from the surgery and never really got back to 100% on that knee but she wasn't very strong to begin with because of her hips. In retrospect I don't think she was a great surgical candidate because of her HD. About a year later she got a partial tear in the other knee but I chose to treat that conservatively and it healed well. She died of cancer just short of age 12.
Chama had partial tears in both of her knees and I treated them both conservatively and they healed well but she did have arthritis when she got older. She was on 2 different kinds of joint supplements, Ester C and some herbs and homeopathy for her arthritis and all things considered she got around quite well. She also died of cancer at age 14 plus a few months.