I feel like the oddball posting in this forum when the majority of cases are due to cancer. Our story:

Nugget is our almost 3 year old Saint Bernard. He was a normal happy puppy and we fell in love with him immediately. Our older Saint Bernard Tiny took some time to acclimate to the change, but now they're the best of buds. My boyfriend and I starting noticing around his one year mark that he was having some slight limping. We would take him to the vet, and it was always diagnosed as growing pains or something of that nature. The limping grew worse, and we would take him back to the vet to no avail. Finally one vet was able to diagnose the problem when she felt his rear kneecap pop out of place during an examination. He has a luxating patella in his rear left knee. We scheduled surgery soon after. The first surgery did not work, so the vet went back in and tightened the muscles again. When that surgery did not work, he referred us to a specialist to decided to go in and break his leg and insert a plate to stabilize the area. A few weeks later we took him back for a follow-up to discover he had broken screws and the plate was not holding. Back in again to insert a second plate and more screws. We are now several months past that final surgery, he is not using his leg, and the vet is recommending either a full hip replacement that may or may not work and could cost us around 13k; or we can do an amputation and focus on his right leg. The situation is compounded by the fact that he has severe hip dysplasia in both hips, and he is such a large breed dog. The vet calls him an orthopedic nightmare. It's a sad situation to be in. Does anyone else have a similar story?