Thank you all so much for your feedback. It helps me so very much, you have no idea how grateful I am. Thank you all a million times-THANKS
First I would like to address ladyjane's question about asking the neuro what she would do
if she were me. Actually, I did ask her that. I asked, "would YOU do the surgery, if it were you?" Her answer......"probably not!" She said " I'm not telling you NOT to do the surgery, but I don't think I would take the risk given the fact that she is 5 years old and managed to compensate quite well for it all this time. If she were one year old, and we didn't know what her body would do, it might be different."
So I'm starting to think about this somewhat philosophically. Who among us on this earth lives without any risk? I guess we all incur SOME risks, albeit most of the time they are calculated and hopefully the odds are in our favor. With Cassie she says the odds for surgery are about 50/50 or MAYBE 60/40.
I'm not sure what the odds would be about letting the girls be together-as before.
I still have some soul searching to do, because if Cassie can live a normal life, and not have to be handled like a china doll, but could experience the FULL experience of being a dog, well that is very attractive to me.
I still am struggling because she did say Cassie's chances could possibly be better than 50/50.
But as a lot of you have said, I could go back to the way things used to be before I knew any of this, and take my chances...another kind of risk. This is so trying............