Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Teaching My Tripod Dog to Use a Wheel Cart

Babe is my special dog and deserves nothing but the best. After losing her left rear leg as a puppy, enduring a neglectful beginning to her life, she is now about 6 years old and is the smartest, most obedient dog I've ever had. As a Rottweiler mix, she makes a great watch dog.

But as she grows older, the remaining rear leg has been taking all the weight and is now suffering some breakdown of the joint cartilages. We have her on natural joint care supplements, and it helps, but continued stress makes it difficult to see much progress. That's why we wanted to get her some physical help to allow the good leg to recover from the stress of having to do all the work. These dogs are prone to joint problems anyway, so losing a leg just put her at greater risk.

So we appealed to others for help, and through generous donations, we finally were able to obtain her "doggie wheel chair," or, Wheel Cart. It's a DwaneCart and is one of the most lightweight dog vehicles available.

Here she is on her first day, "trying it on:"



Today was her third day of training to learn how to walk in it, and to tweak the settings so it's most comfortable. Once she has the walking down, she will no doubt figure out she can also run!

1 comment:

LiveWorkDream said...

Babe is a real Tripawd Hero! We hope the cart works well for her.

We would love to write a story about her for our Tripawds blog. We were just talking about rear-leg Tripawds and wheel carts the other day.

Can you contact us at your convenience? We'd love to hear from you.

Go Babe, go!

Your friends,
Rene, Jim, Wyatt Ray & Spirit Jerry
Tripawds.com