Ask Laura: dog weight bearing toe amputation appropriate or not?

I received this question as a comment on my post Toe Amputation for Cats and Dogs and thought I'd pull it out on its own as I get asked this question frequently enough.

Question from Jill Kane:

My dog's rear foot was run over by a car - tearing the pad through to the tendon and ultimately breaking her toe. One option I have is to patiently wait to see if the bones will heal over time (6-8 weeks). This option may not work due to the break. The other option is to amputate her toe. The concern is that it is a weight bearing toe - can this be done with favorable results?

Answer:

Jill, that is an excellent question that I'm definitely not qualified to answer. So, I popped the question off to one of our advisory veterinarians who specializes in orthopedic surgery and this was here answer:

One weight bearing toe can be amputated and the dog should do well, the veterinarian needs to be sure to reconstruct the skin in order to assist with weight distribution.

Also other things to take into consideration is how much of the toe needs to be removed. Are the metatarsals/metacarpals intact, certainly DO NOT remove those. Amputation of just p3 will do better than p2 and p3 as well as p1-p3.... Also, what is the size of the dog? Smaller dogs will do better than larger ones.

[Note that P1, P2, P3 are short for the different "phalanges" or toe bones, which you can see labeled in the illustration to the right]