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Prosthetics company for pets
#1
A young man experienced in producing prosthetic limbs was approached by a vet for help with a dog.
From that one dog, things have expanded and he now makes over 200 limbs a month. His clients are everything from cats to elephants.


http://news.google.ca/news/url?sr=1&ct2=...t=2&at=dt0


It is so good that there is a company specializing in prosthetics for animals. With all the different animals in need, new materials and lots of practice, making limbs for animals is becoming an art. No matter what the injury, animals are regaining mobility and living fuller lives. Some of the limbs are unusual looking, but the animals seem to like them.

We could wish that no animal ever needed his help again, but if they do  they Derrick will be there to help them.
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Catherine

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#2
Yes prosthetics do give all sorts of animals a new lease of life. I think it is a great idea! I have seen quite a few happy healthy 3-legged dogs...but if they can be given a new 'limb' so long as it doesn't cause pain, that is even better.

It's good to know there is a specialist who devotes his skills to animals.

What I often wonder about is that the work of the Fitzpatrick clinic in England, provides animals with an endoskeletal prosthetic. That is a prosthetic which is attached to the bone, and which merges into the bone. With that method there can sometimes be infection possibilities -but if it works, the animal has a new limb which becomes a part of their body for the rest of their life. Yet I haven't heard or seen anything much at all about that for humans! Humans seem to be always given exoskeletal prosthetics! These can be hard to get used to and can be uncomfortable sometimes.
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#3
I wonder if endoskeletal prosthetics is still in the experimental stage. There must be a number of issues to be worked out.  In the end it will be the best solution to limb loss. They are working at hooking up the nerves so the limb will have full function.  That would be for limbs that have been amputated.  I don't know if it would apply to limbs that were deformed or absent from birth. That might be a different kind of problem.

This whole field is growing and changing. Even the limbs they are making are better and better. They have better materials. They are light enough that the dog can use them comfortably. They no longer try to make the prosthesis look like the limb it is replacing. They work more at replacing the function the limb performed. They do that with humans too. The best prosthesis is often very odd looking.

Lots of animals are doing very well with a little help. This morning my bus was stuck in traffic so I had time to watch a man walking his shepherd dog. The dog was having fun sniffing its way along the sidewalk. As the dog got close I could see that it had no eyes. It is not that they were closed. The eye lids covered  sunken areas. The dog was doing just fine walking with a human who had a leash to guide him.  So I basically saw a "seeing eye" human guiding a blind dog.
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Catherine

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