Three Years post FHO Surgery

I started this blog originally to chronicle my experience with my very first pit bull type dog. On June 19th of 2013 Seppel had FHO surgery on his right leg. I would say most folks find my blog researching this surgery. I chronicled our experience on this blog because when I was researching it I could only find information on dogs a few days post surgery and nothing really too detailed.

Just to give some back story, Seppel came up sore back in 2013, his hip and iliopsoas muscle were painful. We xrayed his hips which revealed unilateral hip dysplasia. At the time we had been doing IPO protection training for a year and because he leads such an active lifestyle he was only going to continue to re-injure himself. I took him to an orthopedic specialist who didn't exactly recommend an FHO. The gold standard surgery is a total hip replacement that would set me back $4k even with a professional discount. However he agreed that my dog would continue to be painful if we didn't do anything.

I scoured the internet looking for resources on FHO dogs. I contacted a few people looking for FHO outcome information. It was extremely hard to find information on dogs after they had fully recovered. I decided to go through with the surgery and I really couldn't be happier. We've had no problems since the surgery and he is physically able to do all the things he could do before except he's not painful.

Here is a video I put together which shows his first few days after surgery, some rehab, and recent pictures and video of him doing things now.