Column -- Knee injury puts man's best friend on the IR

YAKIMA -- September was a bad month for knees -- New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman and nearly every Seattle Seahawks receiver this side of Steve Largent all suffered ACL, MCL and PCL injuries or some combination of ailing acronyms.

And now Goldberg.

My 8-year-old, 100-pound Lab whose buff build and buff coat have gotten him pegged as a mountain lion from afar, ruptured the cranial cruciate ligament in his left knee. It sounds like something that should be in his noggin, but it's the canine equivalent to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).

He will have surgery Monday to rebuild the ligament and stabilize the joint.

As if having a doofus of an owner who named him after a pro wrestler isn't bad enough.

To be truthful, he's unknowingly lived up to the wrassler tag. As a puppy he somehow found his head in the middle of a collapsing lawn chair. Not a metal-folding chair the WWE's best are likely to plunk each other with, but close enough.

A year or two later, he fell out of a moving truck on Summitview Avenue, holding on to the closed tailgate as if he were the next-to-last guy in a battle royale clinging to the top rope.

This time, he undoubtedly hurt his knee the same way many of football counterparts did -- chasing, catching or carrying a ball. His a rubber ball a tad smaller than a baseball thrown with a plastic launcher.

Goldberg love of fetching probably helped stave off complications from another malady -- bad hips. The big boy has been battling hip dysplasia since Day 1.

As with the knee injury, he accepted it with nary a whimper while still trying to hit top speed, arthritis be damned.

As a pup he didn't have a surgery called a triple osteotamy -- the pelvis would be broken in three places and rebuilt -- under the advice of Kent Thomazin, the Newcastle veterinarian who will perform Goldberg's knee surgery.

Dr. Thomazin rightly figured Goldberg's muscular build, augmented with glucosamine and the occasional anti-inflammatory, would help stave off the often crippling ailment.

Man, bad knees, bad hips and clumsy? Goldberg is part my dad, Bo Jackson and President Ford.

And he's part of the family, which helps cushion the surgery's hit to the pocketbook.

Like many dog owners, money isn't the top priority in keeping him and his partner in crime, Boeheim, healthy. (Yes, another unfortunately named dog. And no, he's not the whiner the Syracuse basketball coach for whom he's named after is.)

The tough part will be handing off his leash to a vet assistant. It's about the only time he's anxious. That and, for some reason, linoleum floors.

Then there will be the rehab, estimated by a local vet to take 2-3 months. But he'd do it for me if he could. Heck, his cold nose nudging my hand is often elixir enough.

So we'll go through it together: Owner with a heavy heart and dog with a balky knee.

All with the same hopes of those hobbled football players -- to get back in action.

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