Harley a.k.a Tom Brady

September 12, 2008: As funny as it sounds, Harley completely blew out his ACL in his left hind leg. I had been in Lexington for a few days for work and on the drive home Brad called and said, “Brooke you might want to take Harley to the vet tomorrow. He is really favoring that left leg (Harley has been experiencing some problems in that particular leg for about two months now). By the time, I got home, Harley was only using three legs to walk and hurt leg wasn’t even touching the ground. Needless to say, I was the first patient in Dr. Duncan’s office that Friday morning! Dr. Duncan quickly diagnosed Harley with a torn ACL.

At that point, I had two options: 1) Have Dr. Duncan do the surgery by implanting materials to repair the damaged ACL. This option couldn’t guarantee a higher success rate as option #2 or assure me that he wouldn’t have future problems. 2) Be referred to MedVet Animal Hospital in Columbus, where doctors perform 8-10 TPO surgeries a day (which is what Harley desperately needed). However, this surgery could guarantee me a higher percentage of Harley returning to his normal life again without future problems, if we followed protocol and guidelines set forth by the doctors themselves!