Cruciate Ligament Disease guides
Practical, veterinary-led guidance on Cruciate Ligament Disease, following the journey stage by stage. Read in order, or jump to where you are. View all guides
1Understanding cruciate disease
6 guides
Has My Dog Done Its Cruciate? Signs and Symptoms
A cruciate problem usually arrives one of two ways. Sometimes it's sudden: the dog jumps off the sofa or skids on the kitchen floor chasing a ball and comes up holding a back leg in the air. Sometimes there's no single moment at all, just a limp that drifts in and out for weeks, worse...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 9 min read
Cruciate Ligament Disease: Understanding the Most Common Reason Dogs Need Knee Surgery
A dog diagnosed with cranial cruciate ligament disease is in very common company. It's the single most common orthopaedic problem in dogs and the most frequent reason a dog ends up needing knee surgery. It's also one of the biggest causes of hind-limb arthritis, which is why it earns a detailed article in this space.
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 11 min read
Which Dogs Get It? Breed, Weight, Neutering and Conformation
"Why mine?" is the question that surfaces within a day of a cruciate rupture, and it arrives wrapped in guilt: the muddy field, the ball you threw, the jump off the sofa, the extra couple of kilos you'd been meaning to address. I hear it in the consult room more than almost any other, and...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
How Cruciate Disease Is Diagnosed
In the consulting room, a vet who suspects a cruciate problem will bend and push the limping leg in a particular way, and a few minutes later may start talking about sedation, X-rays and surgery. It can all happen quickly. So why does the leg get handled like that? Why raise sedation or an X-ray,...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Partial Cruciate Tears: The Tricky Early Stage
Lame, then fine, then lame again. That on-and-off pattern is what brings a lot of dogs into my consulting room with a partial cruciate tear, and it tends to come with a frustrating conversation. Your vet has felt the knee, frowned a little, used the words "partial tear", and then said something that sounded a...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Why It's Degeneration, Not an Injury
A sentence I hear over and over, usually said quietly, usually while the owner looks at the floor: "I shouldn't have thrown the ball." "He only jumped off the sofa." There's nearly always a thread of guilt running through it, the sense that one ordinary moment broke a healthy dog.
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
2Surgery or conservative management?
4 guides
Does My Dog Need an Orthopaedic Specialist?
Being offered a referral for cruciate surgery sets two questions running in most owners' heads at once: is my dog's knee worse than I was told, and did my own vet just admit they're out of their depth. I see that flicker across the consult-room table all the time, and I want to take the...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
What Cruciate Surgery Costs in the UK, and Insurance
Most pages about cruciate surgery dance around the money. I'd rather not. Someone has probably said a number out loud, you've got a quote in front of you, and what you want is the actual figures laid out plainly, plus the bits about insurance that almost nobody mentions until it's too late. That's what this...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Conservative Management: When It's a Real Option (and When It Isn't)
Surgery gets mentioned, and a quieter question tends to follow close behind: do we actually have to? Sometimes the operation costs more than a family can stretch to. Sometimes the dog is fourteen and the thought of an anaesthetic is unbearable. Sometimes it's a little terrier who already seems to be coping. Whatever the reason,...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Surgery or Not? How to Think About the Cruciate Decision
Your dog has done its cruciate, someone has said the word surgery, and there's almost certainly a number attached to all of it. So the question now is whether you're about to do the right thing or the wrong thing by them, and it's a heavy one to be sitting with, often a day or...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
3Choosing the right procedure
6 guides
Braces and Orthoses: What the Evidence Says
Type "dog knee brace cruciate" into a search bar and what comes back is a wall of confident advertising: hinged braces, before-and-after photos, the strong implication that for a few hundred pounds you can sidestep the operation altogether. When surgery is off the table, or a long way down your list, and the surgical numbers...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
The Meniscus: The Other Injury in the Knee
Somewhere in the conversation about your dog's cruciate, a second word usually gets mentioned. The vet might say "we'll check the meniscus while we're in there," or "there's a meniscal tear too," or the surgeon reaches for "meniscal release" just as you'd finally got your head around the cruciate itself. There's a second reason owners...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Lateral Suture: The Less Invasive Option
A lateral suture is the cruciate operation that doesn't cut your dog's shin bone, and that fact tends to pull owners two ways at once. There's relief that a saw isn't part of the plan, and there's a nagging suspicion that the gentler-sounding option must be the second-rate one. Neither reading holds up. The lateral...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
TTA and the Other Osteotomies
The letters on your consent form say TTA, or MMP, or CBLO, and somewhere along the way the internet told you everyone does the TPLO. So a familiar worry arrives: a surgeon you trust has recommended a different set of initials, and it's hard not to read that as your dog getting the lesser version....
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
TPLO Explained: What It Is and Who It's For
A TPLO is the operation most surgeons reach for when a dog tears its cruciate, and the acronym sounds a great deal more alarming than the procedure deserves. Once you have a date in the diary and a consent form to sign, the four letters tend to sit there looking ominous. So let me do...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
TPLO vs TTA vs Lateral Suture: An Even-Handed Comparison
Start reading about cruciate surgery and you'll hit a wall of acronyms within five minutes. TPLO. TTA. Lateral suture, extracapsular, TightRope. One forum swears blind that TPLO is the only thing worth doing; the next says their dog did beautifully on a lateral suture and the bone-cutting operations are overkill. Your own vet has recommended...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
4Recovery and rehabilitation
7 guides
Conservative Management, Day to Day
The decision is made. Perhaps you and your vet weighed it up together and conservative management was the sensible call. Perhaps surgery was never realistically on the table, for health or financial reasons, and this is simply the road you're on. Either way, you've probably hit the same frustration: nearly every page that says "you...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Is This Normal? Red Flags During Cruciate Recovery
Most of the worried phone calls I take in the weeks after cruciate surgery end the same way: the dog is fine. The leg looked a bit puffier than yesterday, there was an off day, and an owner sat by the crate late at night talking themselves into the worst. I've taken those calls for...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Home Exercises by Recovery Phase
The discharge sheet says "gentle controlled exercise", or "we can show you some physio", and leaves it there. What that means at home, with your own dog on your own kitchen floor, is anyone's guess. Most owners want to help and are quietly terrified of doing the wrong thing, because every time the dog shifts...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 9 min read
Physiotherapy and Hydrotherapy After Cruciate Surgery
Somewhere in the discharge conversation, between the wound care and the rest rules, somebody said the word "physio." Maybe they handed you a leaflet, maybe they just said your dog would "need some rehab" and moved on. The questions tend to land once you're home. What does it actually do? When can it start? Is...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Strict Rest Without Losing Your Mind
The hardest part of cruciate recovery usually isn't the operation. It's the weeks afterwards, when your dog feels brilliant, looks brilliant, and has absolutely no idea that the repair holding their knee together is still healing. They want to leap onto the sofa. You have to stop them, again, for the fortieth time today, and...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 11 min read
The First Two Weeks at Home After Surgery
The shaved leg, the cone catching on the door frame, the wound that looks more dramatic than you'd braced for: that's what most dogs come home looking like, and most owners spend that first evening watching for every wince and quietly dreading that they'll undo a very expensive operation. So let me say the useful...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 9 min read
The 12-Week Recovery Roadmap After Cruciate Surgery
The surgery takes one day. The recovery takes around twelve weeks, and it's the recovery, far more than the operation, that decides how well your dog ends up. So this page isn't a single instruction sheet for tonight. It's the whole road mapped out, so you know not just what to do this week but...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 9 min read
5Protecting the other leg
3 guides
Weight, Muscle and the Long Game
Two of the most powerful tools in orthopaedic medicine sit in your hands at home, and neither needs a prescription or a referral. By the point most owners reach this article the big decisions are already behind them. The surgery is done, or the conservative plan is underway, and the worst of the worry about...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 11 min read
Spotting Early Signs in the Other Knee
Once a dog has been through a cruciate on one side, most owners start watching the other leg. You've learned to read your dog's back end in a way you never used to: the pause before the jump, the way they shift their weight at the food bowl, the morning they're a little slow off...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Will the Other Leg Go Too? The Bilateral Risk
Once the first knee has been fixed and the limp has settled, a lot of owners arrive at the same quiet question: what about the other leg? Maybe a friend mentioned it, maybe you read it somewhere, or maybe nobody warned you at all and you're meeting the idea right now, a few weeks or...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
6Living with arthritis afterwards
2 guides
Keeping a Post-Cruciate Dog Comfortable for Life
The crate rest is over, the limp has gone, and the dog who couldn't put a foot to the floor is trotting around the kitchen again. Whether you chose surgery or managed the knee without it, the hard part really is behind you. What most owners want to know at this point is simply what...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Cruciate Disease and Arthritis: The Lifelong Picture
There's a question that almost never gets asked in the consult room, because by the time the leg is working again the appointment is over and everyone's relieved. The diagnosis landed, you made a decision about surgery or conservative care, you got through the recovery or the long slow build of it, and your dog...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Find real-world care
When you're ready to take the next step in person, the PetCare Atlas lists orthopaedic and rehabilitation specialists across the UK. Search by your postcode to find someone near you.
Find a vet or specialist near you