MARLON: This surgery is extremely important
to my business. This is an extremely valuable dog. What makes me nervous is any time you
put something under anaesthesia is waking back up.
MARLON: I’ve been breeding these pit bulls for 15 years.
MARLON: You’ve probably heard of the Hulk before, one of the most famous dogs on Earth.
MARLON: But his cousin, Ace, he is pretty special too.
MARLON: Compared to other pit bulls, Ace
is absolutely a super dog.
MARLON: This dog is almost one in a million.
MARLON: Ace is probably one of the most muscular
dogs in the world right now and you are not seeing him in his best condition.
MARLON: So Ace hasn’t been himself for the
past couple of months. I’m about to drive him 80 miles to get surgery.
MARLON: He tore what’s called a cruciate
ligament in his knee.
MARLON: You would think that an injury like
that from a dog like him came from him going something extreme. But believe it or not,
he injured himself chasing a ball in the front yard. Stepped on uneven part of the ground
and that was it. What’s important now is we get him fixed up so he can go back doing
what he loves to do and, you know, and what I love to do, and what the world loves to
watch. He is my main demo dog. He shows the world what we are capable of really. I don’t
try to be nervous or anything, you know, because then the dog picks that up, you know. I stay
cool, confident, you know, calm and collected.
MARLON: I don’t even know if I can explain
the emotional attachment that I have to this dog.
MARLON: This dog has put his life on the line
for me before. I was at a gas a station and I don’t know where when I was in my car,
a guy approached me and reached in my car and tried to grab me. I quickly reached back
and I rolled down the window, and Ace jumped out and grabbed the guy by his shoulder, and,
I mean, he let out the most blood curdling scream ever. I told him to out and he came
back in the car and the guy ran off into the distance so, he saved my life, man. He is
one in a million.
DR. MELISSA DUDLEY: Hi, how are you? I’m
doctor Dudley. Nice to meet you. MARLON: Nice to meet you.
DR. MELISSA DUDLEY: And who is this? MARLON: This is Ace.
DR. MELISSA DUDLEY: The goal of the surgery is to not to replace the ligament at all,
but to alter his bio mechanics. So, theoretically he doesn’t need a ligament any more. The TPLO,
it stand for tibial plateau levelling osteotomy. The top of the tibia, that is called the tibial
plateau. The osteotomy word just means I’m going to cut the bone. So, I cut the tibia
below the knee so I can rotate the top until it's level. Hence tibial plateau levelling
osteotomy. MARLON: Yeah.
DR. MELISSA DUDLEY: And then what we do is we put a big metal plate and screws on
because we have created a fracture, but it’s a controlled fracture, and then we put a plate
on it and then the bone will heal.
DR. MELISSA DUDLEY: All right.
MARLON: I’ll be right there. DR. MELISSA DUDLEY: So, we’ll be waiting.
MARLON: Thank very much. DR. MELISSA DUDLEY: It was nice to meet you.
Talk to you soon. MARLON: Nice to meet you, thank you.
MARLON: That was very interesting. I didn’t,
I just was in class for a minute, you know. So I learned a lot about ligaments and dogs’
knees and different types of surgery. Makes a lot of sense to me.
MARLON: All right, buddy, you’re gonna be
all right. Where am I gonna go? You’re gonna be all right.
MARLON: I felt good after talking to her.
She really sounds like she is on the ball and she knows what she’s doing. So I’m
absolutely, absolutely hoping for the best.
LADY: Watch out buddy, watch out for the door.
MARLON: You are always worried about an operation,
you know, because it’s something where they are going to put the dog under, you know,
he is going to go down. There is always the percentage of just freak things happening,
you know, and obviously what makes me nervous is, you know, when any time you put something
under anaesthesia, is waking back up. You know, that’s always the thing.
DR. MELISSA DUDLEY: The ligament was fully
torn and we debrided that, he had a very large tear of his meniscus so, which is a piece
of cartilage in their knee, we took that out, that will certainly make him feel better. But
when you have to take the meniscus out, they lose some of the natural cushion in their
knee, which could have some long term effect in his knee, but it’s still better to remove
a torn one than to leave one behind. The TPLO went great and he has excellent alignment
so, I’m very happy that how the X-rays look.
DR. MELISSA DUDLEY: I can’t guarantee he
will return the full activity he had before, but that’s our hope with surgery.
MARLON: It’s been a long night for me. It
was strange, not going into his room and feed him and take him out. I spoke with them yesterday
so, they told me everything was good, everything went well. I’m sure that they will tell
me a whole lot more today, a little more details, you know, I just wanted to know that my dog
woke up, you know, that’s the main concern that I had.
MARLON: How you doing?
LADY: You are here for Ace. MARLON: Yes.
LADY: Ace is definitely ready to go home. MARLON: I’m sure he is. I’m sure he is.
MARLON: You know, it was actually lees expensive
than I thought but, I mean, to, I guess, the average person, yeah, it was pretty expensive.
I think it was like $4,100 or something. INTERVIEWER: Was it worth it?
MARLON: Of course. Of course! This is beyond worth it. It doesn’t matter if it was 20,000,
we would have spent 20,000. If it was thirty, we would have done that, you know.
MARLON: You can’t get a better surgery than
I just had done on him.
RANDY BROWN: Hi!
MARLON: How you doing? RANDY BROWN: Good. He is very stable. He got
up and he got out. MARLON: I’m very pleased to hear that and
I’m very glad, I appreciate you guys very much for taking care of him and you know.
RANDY BROWN: We had him, he was on some pretty groovy drugs.
MARLON: I’m excited to just start the process
and get him recovered and get back to work.
MARLON: Oh, wow! Come on, bud. Come on! He is like
what is going on here. Are you all right?
MARLON: Hang on. I’m not going to make you
walk with that thing. Just a little hard to see him like that, you know, but I know that
we did the right thing for him. He is like, “Dude are you’re serious there?’ You
look like a lantern, fella.
MARLON: The vet told us that we had to keep
him confined for two weeks. Keep him on a leash when he went outside, so he wouldn’t
rip the stitches out of his leg.
MARLON: Keeping Ace confined has been a challenge.
That’s actually what I knew from the beginning was gonna be the hardest challenge, was
keeping this rocket ship confined. His energy level is just through the roof all the time,
especially with a dog that has a job and now he can’t do it, you know. He can’t work,
he can’t exercise like he normally used to, you now, so everything, his whole life
just slows down so.
MARLON: So before he had surgery, he got really,
really fat, which happens because he just wasn’t exercising the same way as he was
before so, as he had surgery, we put him back on his regular diet and he’s slimmed back
down to a good weight. And then once he is healthy, and they give us the green light,
we’ll start to put the muscle back on.
MARLON: So Ace’s had his staples out for
about six weeks now. I think we’re ready to go.
MARLON: You know, you are always concerned
when you’ve got a lot riding on something, you know. So I hope that his X-rays show all
is well. If they don’t, and something is wrong, then I’ll have to cross that bridge
when I get there, I guess, but I would be pretty devastated if that were the case.
MARLON: We are here. Back at the vet. Hopefully
Ace is free today. That would be huge, man. That would be huge.
ANNA CRONIN: So if you see right in this area
right here, it shows that he is healing well and he is on the road to recovery, so that
means it’s very well for him. So as long as he keeps up the good work then he should
do well. MARLON: Yeah so, I mean, will he be able to
be 100%, you think? ANNA CRONIN: There is always that chance that
he won’t be 100%. So you want to just keep a close eye on him.
MARLON: Do you think he will be able to do his second storey window routine again?
ANNA CRONIN: I don’t know. That’s crazy when I saw him do that. I don’t know. That’s
up to Ace.
MARLON: Oh, my boy. Things were as good as
I expected for the most part. I figured that he would be able to run a little bit more
right now. But that’s fine, like I said, I think I’ll be a lot more careful with
him anyways. If it’s four weeks, I'll probably give him six or seven before I let him run.
But I’m just really going to focus now on the rehab and just getting him as strong as
I can.
MARLON: He’s definitely a little bit groggy
now if you can’t tell. I always feel bad, you know, when they gotta poke and prod at
him. I’m glad that he is down with it. He can just go home. Now he can get back to work
and do what he loves to do so, that makes me happy.