ohmidog!

Pirelli came into the world last year — bred to be a service dog, but born without one of his rear paws, apparently the result of the umbilical cord wrapping around it and cutting off circulation.

Despite that, he’d go on to serve — visiting schools to get across the message that appearances are meaningless and obstacles can be overcome

“I think the fact that he has a disability of his own is going to be incredible in teaching people that it’s irrelevant, that life is not about what your body can do. It’s about who you are on the inside not the outside, Jennifer Arnold, the founder of Canine Assistants in Alpharetta, Georgia, said at the time.

“I want Pirelli to go into schools and say when you judge whether or not you want someone to be your friend, don’t look at their bodies,” she told WWLP – 22 News. “That’s not where you need to look.”

Pirelli — named after a tire because “he needs a retread” — was outfitted with a temporary prosthetic and went on to spread some hope and inspiration.

Now, months later, it’s his turn to receive some: Through donations from those touched by his story, he’s getting a prosthetic foot — similar to the futuristic running blades worn by South African Olympian and double amputee Oscar Pistorius, NBC’s Today Show reported.

After earlier prosthetic devices proved less than perfect, the staff at Canine Assistants launched a fundraising campaign online, asking for donations to outfit Pirelli with a state-of-the-art carbon fiber paw.

While he is waiting for the surgery, Pirelli has been fitted with a plastic version of the carbon foot. The implantation of his permanent prosthesis will be done at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

The prosthesis — being built by Hangar Clinic, the company whose work in prosthetics helped inspire the recent film “Dolphin Tale” — will be implanted into his leg bone.

(Photo: Facebook)

High School teachers Steven and Debbie Leatherman headed to the basement with their cocker spaniel Sugar when the tornado sirens sounded in Joplin, Missouri, on May 22.

After turning on the television and seeing what was headed their way, they decided to seek the additional protection of their storm shelter.

Sugar, 10, must have sensed their anxiety. She bolted back upstairs to her own favorite hiding place, under a bed.

Less than a minute later, the twister tore their house apart.

When they emerged from the shelter, debris was all that remained of their home and Sugar was missing. Their son Daniel, a University of Missouri student, drove home from Columbia the next morning, helping his parents sift through the rubble and seek out their dog.

Meanwhile, Daniel’s aunt in Kansas turned to her computer, searching for a clue to Sugar’s whereabouts.

On Facebook she found a dog resembling Sugar that had been picked up in a storm ditch several blocks from the Leatherman’s house. The dog’s rear legs were paralyzed and she was unable to get out on her own.

At the Joplin Humane Society, a veterinarian advised the Leathermans to seek care for their pet in another city, due to the strain on resources in Joplin.

Daniel Leatherman called the University of Missouri Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, where vets agreed to take a look.

The next day, Fred Wininger, an assistant professor of neurology and neurosurgery in the College of Veterinary Medicine, examined the dog and noted that while she had no use of her hind legs, she retained pain sensation in her paws. He determined she had sustained something called a traumatic T12-13 intervertebral disc rupture.

Wininger explained: “The intervertebral disc is like a jelly donut that is soft at its core and harder on the outside. Its function is to cushion the vertebral bones around the spinal cord. With severe enough injury, the “jelly” center, also known as the nucleus pulposus, can extrude out of the shell and compress the spinal cord.”

The rupture caused severe bruising to Sugar’s spinal cord and mild subluxation, or malalignment or the bones. Wininger performed a surgical procedure known as a hemilaminectomy, which created a window in the vertebral bone allowing him to decompress the disc and hemorrhage that was pushing on the cord.

Two days after surgery — and every day for seven days — therapists electrically stimulated Sugar’s hind limbs to help prevent muscle atrophy, and the dog began underwater treamill therapy as well.

On June 6, two weeks after the tornado, Sugar began to show movement in her hind legs for the first time.

The Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital through its Silent Partners Fund and College of Veterinary Medicine absorbed the cost of Sugar’s treatment and therapy. Orscheln Farm and Home in Columbia also helped out by donating food and toys to help with Sugar’s care.

A little more than a week later, on June 14, Daniel Leatherman collected the family’s beloved pet to continue her recovery at home. “We are so warmed by everything that has been done,” he said. “It has given us back our family.”

(Source: University of Missouri News Bureau)

 
Dogs are better walking companions than humans on almost all counts, a new study shows, with the possible exception of conversation (though I generally favor them in that category as well).

Research at the University of Missouri has found that people who walk dogs are more consistent about regular exercise, walk at a brisker (therefore more healthy) pace, and show more improvement in fitness than people who walk with a human companion, according to the New York Times health blog, “Well.”

In a 12-week study of 54 older adults at an assisted living home, 35 people were assigned to a 5-day-a-week walking program — 23 walking with a friend or spouse, 12 walking dogs at a local animal shelter.

The dog walkers showed a big improvement in fitness, while the human walkers began making excuses to skip the workout. Walking speed among the dog walkers increased by 28 percent, compared with just a 4 percent increase among the human walkers.

“The improvement in walking speed means their confidence in their walking ability had increased and their balance had increased. To have a 28 percent improvement in walking speed is mind boggling,” said Rebecca A. Johnson, a nursing professor and director of the Research Center for Human Animal Interaction at the University of Missouri’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

Johnson said the dog walkers were far more consistent in sticking with the program than those who were walking with humans: “In the human walking group, they were regularly discouraging each other from walking,” she said. “Missouri is a hot state. We would hear them saying: ‘It’s hot today. I don’t want to walk, do you?’ ”

The dog walkers, on the other hand, were nearly always up for the task:

“When the people came to the animal shelter, they bounced off the bus and said, ‘Where’s my dog?”’  Johnson said. “And the dogs never gave any discouragement from walking.”

The study, not yet published,  is continuing, and Johnson said she suspects differences will show up in other areas, like depression and anxiety.

Already, though, Johnson said, many people in the dog-walking group stopped using canes and walkers. “They would say, ‘Now I’m physically fit enough to take my dog for a walk,”’