Miami Herald

‘The Wizard of Paws’ works to craft prosthetic­s for animals

- BY LUAINE LEE

‘‘

I HAD NEVER HEARD OF ANIMAL PROSTHETIC­S. AND I FIT THAT DOG, AND I GOT SUCH JOY AND FULFILLMEN­T OUT OF IT, I STARTED A COMPANY RIGHT AWAY. Derrick Campana

For 17 years Derrick Campana has been gifting the disabled with a new lease on life with braces, prosthetic­s and engineered equipment. But Campana’s clients have four legs, not two. And he never planned it that way.

Armed with a master’s degree in prosthetic­s and orthotics, Campana was perfectly happy serving his two-legged clientele. But one day a veterinari­an walked into his clinic with black lab named Charlie. Charlie suffered from a congenital deformity to his front leg.

“She said, ‘My dog needs a prosthesis.’ And I kind of looked at her weird because I never saw a dog with a prosthesis,” he says.

“I had never heard of animal prosthetic­s. And I fit that dog, and I got such joy and fulfillmen­t out of it, I started a company right away. That was about 17 years ago, and I’ve helped almost 30,000 patients to this point regain their mobility,” he says.

Charlie may have started it, but Campana is nonpartisa­n in his ministrati­ons. “One day I’ll have an eagle leg or an owl or an elephant leg on my desk and

the next day it’s a couple of dogs and a goat and a llama or a deer,” he says.

His most challengin­g job was building a custom wheelchair for a tortoise, he says. “That was really fun. And I’ve done talons for eagles, owl legs, a leg for a crane, an elephant leg. I’m making four elephant legs in Thailand this summer.”

Viewers can watch this modern-day Hippocrate­s and his unpredicta­ble patients on the TV series, “The Wizard of Paws,” now airing on BYU TV.

Campana travels the world fitting apparatuse­s for impaired animals. His company, Bionic

Pets, manufactur­es a variety of mobility equipment. The website is www.bionicpets.org.

“The majority of the cases I treat I never see,” he says. “So we send out these Fiberglas casting kits all over the world and a lot of times the animal owner or veterinari­an makes a cast of the animal, and it’s the first time they’ve made a cast, and a lot of time we get not the best cast,” he smiles.

“And we have to take this mold and turn it into something that’s going to help the animal. . . Doing it by mail and helping animals in that way can be really, really difficult – that’s why there are so few of us who do that.”

Prosthetic­s refers to limb replacemen­ts, he explains; orthotics are braces. Campana often treks cross-country with what he calls his “mobile limb lab.” “I go right to the family, right to the people, I cast it, build the device, and fit the animal right there. That’s the way it should be. It’s a better way to do it.”

He was always artistic as a child. Campana says: “When I was a kid I was sculpting every day with plaster and things like that. I did go to medical school and learned a lot about human prosthetic­s, but I was self-taught in how to do veterinary prosthetic­s because there was no textbook showing how to do those things.”

It’s not exactly an art and not exactly a science, Campana says.

Many of his patients are dogs and the common problem with them, he says, are their ACLs, their knees. “These surgeries cost around 5 grand and what people don’t realize is that if you put a knee brace on a dog, after about six months a lot of times, the knee will heal, and you can avoid surgery all together. So we’re saving people thousands of dollars and helping their dog.”

The cost of braces runs around $700, says Campana. “And most of our prosthetic­s are around $1,100 so it’s one of the misconcept­ions out there that these things are so expensive that you have to be rich to do this for your animal, when actually it’s quite the opposite. We’re saving thousands of dollars by avoiding surgery and helping the animal to have a longer and healthier life because we can extend their lives by a couple years,” he says.

BYU TV discovered Campana when he appeared on the first episode of “Dodo Heroes,” which aired on Animal Planet and is streaming now on discovery+. In that segment, he replaced all four legs on a dog named Chi-Chi.

 ?? SCOTT MACKAY
Courtesy BYU TV/TNS ?? Samson was a stray who was missing his right front paw before the woman who adopted him sought Derrick Campana’s help. Campana, who designs prosthetic­s and orthotics for suffering animals, is the star of a new BYU TV series, “The Wizard of Paws.” Now Samson runs a mile every day with his mistress.
SCOTT MACKAY Courtesy BYU TV/TNS Samson was a stray who was missing his right front paw before the woman who adopted him sought Derrick Campana’s help. Campana, who designs prosthetic­s and orthotics for suffering animals, is the star of a new BYU TV series, “The Wizard of Paws.” Now Samson runs a mile every day with his mistress.
 ?? CHAD CALL Courtesy BYU TV/TNS ?? Derrick Campana was able to create prosthetic­s to enable Elsa to walk again after she lost all four paws to a tick-borne disease.
CHAD CALL Courtesy BYU TV/TNS Derrick Campana was able to create prosthetic­s to enable Elsa to walk again after she lost all four paws to a tick-borne disease.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States