Re: Opinions please! Operation or not...

What a difficult decision. I can give only you my feeling, no knowledge, I would follow the soft food route.
We have now a vet who believes in waiting with most things, he has said before when we had a problem if I was a surgeon I would say surgery.
Because of the anesthesia I never had my dogs teeth cleaned, only if he had another problem. Once, when he needed surgery to take the pressure off his blind glaucoma eye, since he was in pain, the eye doctor was also able to pull his broken tooth.
I choose at that time not to remove his eye since that was a worse surgery.
May be you can give him some supplements to help the heeling.
Our almost 14 year old dog I give some Iodine since he had low thyroid.