THE HIPPEST DOG IN TOWN... AND THE PROUDEST PUP!
German shepherd Bran could only crawl along on his front legs. When he was seven weeks old, one of his back legs had been removed because of a fracture, and he had dislocated the opposite hip. Now, at seven-and-ahalf months, he could not stand or walk. But he was a boisterous puppy desperate to live life to the full.
To fix Bran’s diseased hip joint, I used a technique inspired by an ice cream scoop. The handle of the scoop is screwed to the wing of the pelvis, and into the bowl goes a plastic cup for the new metal ball head on the femur. Bran was out of pain readily enough and hasn’t looked back since.
Murphy the golden retriever puppy was just three months old when he was attacked by another dog. His lower jaw was ripped off and the remaining blood vessels had ruptured. To preserve those that remained, I used tiny 1.1mm wires threaded through the pieces of the mandible in a kind of suspension trampoline. Murphy became a celebrity in his area, with a cone around his neck and scaffolding around his jaw. He greeted every dog as if nothing had ever happened, and owners Tim and Megan got married with Murphy as the ring bearer.