Jessie is a big, leggie Shepherd mix (90lbs). at 8yrs old she blew out one back knee, which we had the comon surgery on. Within a couple weeks of her recovery from the surgey she blew out the other knee. The cost of a second surgery being prohibitive, we opted for the Posh knee brace. Jessie's full recovery with use of the brace was just about 7 months, including one serious setback at about 10 weeks . She adapted to it quickly and wore it whenever she was active. We had no issues with the brace whatsoever except a small sore that formed on the inside of her ankle joint - the folks at Posh were super responsive, providing us with a different pad that we combined with a cut-off sock to completely resolve that issue. At this point (about 6 months later) Jessie is fully active, taking long hikes with us, chasing balls and sticks and playing with other dogs. She occasionally needs a vetprofin for stiffness, but otherwise, it would be difficult to tell the difference between the knee with the surgery and the one that heeled with the brace. I should mention that Jessie is highly trained and compliant. She did not fight the brace and in fact would come to me and lay in the position to have it put on if she wanted to go outside. The only vigiliance we needed was to make sure she didn't trust the brace so much that she attempted to play in ways that might cause re-injury during the healing process (the cause of the set-back I mentioned). I think it does take a certain amount of discipline on the part of both owner and dog to get optimal results, but we've had fantastic results and I highly recommend the Posh brace as an economical and effective alternative to surgery.