Bionic Dog

After nearly a year of surgery and recovery and then blowing the achilles tendon repair, my vet and I decided to go for an exoskeleton solution. This is Owen in his very fancy orthotic device that the nice folks at K-9 Orthotics in Canada built for him. We made a fiberglass cast of his leg (and cutting it off was the most traumatic part of the whole saga of the leg — poor guy, that cast saw completely freaked him out, and he was on a lot of drugs at the time) and they built him this spiffy brace.

Unfortunately, he had a few hiccups adjusting. The straps rubbed a little sore spot on the back of his ankle so we had a couple of days of bandages while I tried to figure out what to do. And then it dawned on me — fleece! I cut a strip from an old fleece blanket and ran up a couple of sleeves on the sewing machine. There’s a lot of that blanket, so if they get too grubby I can just throw them out, and I assume that after a while his little leg will get accustomed to the pressure. But for now, they’re working great — he’s cruising around like his old self, poking at Raymond to come play and in general, acting like a happy boy again.