Dr Lavigne Operates On A Siberian Husky The Vet Life

Hi, Dr. Levine. Hi. Nice to meet you. Hey, how you doing? My name's Phyllis. Nice to meet you. You too. This is Chocolate. That's Chocolate. Hey, buddy. What's up? He's not putting any weight on that leg. No. He can't even really walk on it. Oh, wow. Have you always had Chocolate? Like since a puppy or? Four weeks. Since 2009. Oh, wow. I imagine you've had him since he was four weeks old. I mean, he must be like a brother or a son to you. He's with me every day. I think humans really can learn a lot from animals just because they don't hold any grudges. They love you. They greet you as you should be greeted when you come through the door from a long, hard day, regardless how his day went. So the respect, the unity. He don't speak English, but he communicates. Oh, yeah. Dogs' love is truly unconditional. So what I'm doing right here is a little test called a tibial thrust. So when we kind of stabilize the knee in a slightly flexed position, and then we lift the foot up, if that ligament is torn, it'll cause the tibia to pop forward like that. He definitely does have that. It's pretty easy to elicit. Obviously, right now, it feels like we have a full tear. With him acting as painful and not really wanting to put any weight on that leg makes me think that we may also have a meniscus tear. The meniscus is, there's actually 2 in each joint. There are little pieces of cartilage that help stabilize the joint and also acts like a shock absorber, so it kind of gives a little padding in between the bones. When the ACL is torn, the knee is kind of grinding on it, so a lot of times, eventually, it'll tear over time, and that usually is more painful. You know, the procedure would be a TPLO, which stands for a tibial plateau leveling osteotomy. What we do is take a saw and make a cut in the top portion of the tibia and rotate it so that it flattens out the tibial plateau. All right, so how long do you think he'll have to be here? Well, I do like to keep them for a few days after surgery. I'm not going to lie, but I've never been really separated from him like that. Well, we'll do everything we can to take good care of him, get him fixed up as soon as you're ready to say your goodbyes. So I'll leave you guys for a minute and send somebody in to get him. All righty. Nice to meet you, and I'll give you guys a call as soon as the surgery's done, let you know how everything went. Okay. I know he in good hands. We'll see you in the back in a few minutes. Everything's going to be all right, man. It'll be over before you know it. Today we got Chocolate, who's a 10-year-old Siberian husky that has been having problems with his left hind limb. He's not really bearing weight at all. He's just kind of walking around on three legs, and they're getting him all prepped up and ready to go. So we're going to get in here and try to get this knee fixed and hopefully get him back to walking around on four legs again. All right, we'll go see what we got. Yeah, he's got a pretty bad tear in the meniscus. I'm going to remove the damaged part. It's actually going to be a pretty substantial portion of it. So that's what was flopping around in there, probably causing him a lot of pain. So it feels a lot better. Don't feel that popping, that clicking motion. We're going to go ahead and close the joint. We're finished with the arthrotomy portion, and then we'll do the TPLO. All right, so everything went pretty smooth, went well. Just got to close him up now and wake Chocolate up, and he can start his recovery. All right, Chocolate, you ready to go home? Wait, wait, wait, don't do too much. Chocolate's been doing great for us following his surgery. He's putting a little bit of weight on that foot, and I'm sure Chocolate can't wait to be reunited with his dad and his grandmother. All right. Hey, Chocolate. He's pulling to come up in here. He's ready to choke you. You feel good, huh? That's the best thing happening to you to get that surgery. Yeah. The biggest thing is going to be trying to keep him restricted and not doing too much. He's wanting to be active, but he's doing real good. That cruciate ligament, there wasn't much left to it. It was gone, and he did tear his meniscus, and I think that's why he was so painful. So I had to remove a nice portion of the meniscus, but that's not going to be flopping around inside the joint there causing that pain. I just want him resting at home. I don't want him doing too much, even if he's just going outside to use the bathroom. I want him on a leash. Oh, for real? Yeah, no off-leash activity for now. No running, no nothing? No, just... Oh, okay. You know, watch some TV and come back in about another week to get the staples taken out. Well, I'm happy. Good. How do you feel? Chocolate happy. He's ready to go. He's been missing you guys. I know he's ready to go. You outdid yourself, you know that? No, he was great, so... Okay. I appreciate you, though. Take care. Thank you so much. All right, target. I've been calling him Chocolate. Yeah, I'm ready. Hey, y'all need help? Nah, we good on this here, boss. All right, I'm about to get started. We're here for Staff Appreciation Day. We just had a big month where our staff was working overtime, really supported the hospital, and they put their best foot forward. We're going to appreciate the staff for the hard work that they do for Cypher Animal Hospital and all the pets here in the community, so it's a win-win for me. This is one of Daddy's secrets. Uncle Mike don't know about this one. Oh, yeah. What's up? I'll just taste my water. No matter what we're doing, some kind of way we turn it into a competition. There is no competition, all right? The end-all be-all is that we're here to show some appreciation to the staff, so good excuse to get everybody together off the clock and just have a good time. Yeah! Y'all guys smelling good out here. A little bit. He's the best crawfisher, boiler that I know from Detroit. You know what? That's the title. I'll take that one. Gather around, everybody. Gather around. Ladies and gentlemen, today is a very special day. You guys have went above and beyond the call of duty, taking care of not even your own pets, taking care of other people's pets, and without you, this circle would not be complete. Amen. We just want to say thank you and show our appreciation by filling your belly. Dig in. Gratitude is defined as the quality of being thankful and a readiness to show appreciation for. I think I'd have missed all mine. They both would. You gotta try both. I'm beyond thankful for our team here at CyFair. In fact, if you look up the word team in the dictionary, you find a photo of all these awesome people who personify it so well. As for the crawfish, they seem to be enjoying mine a lot more. Not that this is a competition or anything. That's what I'm talking about.