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This is Chanelle, a six year old Chocolate Lab. Her family gave her up to an animal control facility, sadly probably due to the high costs they faced as Chanelle has to have extensive knee surgery.

Possibly the saddest part of this tale is that this injury occurred when Chanelle was only 1 year old, so she has been living with the pain of a shifting joint, where her knee bones rub against each other as she moves, for over 5 years. Our guess is Chanelle just couldn’t manage anymore with the pain and infirmity, poor soul.

The surgery is a tibial-plateau-leveling osteotomy (TPLO) which is performed on dogs to stabilize the stifle joint after ruptures of the cranial cruciate ligament (like the ACL in humans). So far, this surgery looks to cost us at least $4000. It is compounded due to the number of years that have passed since the initial injury and the damage that has been done as she tried to move around on it over the years. Sometimes we opt for amputation as it is the best way for the dog due to the damage done to the leg and dogs DO manage well with 3 legs, as we have seen over and over. But amputation is not a viable option here as she is obese and this impacts her other joints’ ability to support her weight and her ability to balance afterwards. So our choice was to save Chanelle or put her down.

Look at her. What do you think we are going for?

She is a very sweet girl and weathers the pain of her leg well. We don’t have the heart to let her go. She’s done nothing wrong. She deserves a chance and with this surgery, and future weight control and good exercise, she will live a happy life and in turn, make some future family happy, too.

Help us save Chanelle. She has lived 5 years with a painful, largely useless back leg. She has had only one year in her life pain-free, before the injury. Let’s work together to bring her many more years of a pain-free, but a joy-filled life! We want to see her chase a ball one day soon!

We got you, Chanelle. The Rosie village has got this.