Hatteras is a two year old chocolate lab who lives with her family on the southeastern Virginia coast.  Hattie enjoys spending long days on her favorite beaches with her human siblings, and loves nothing more than finding a nice long dock to jump off of. On 5/29/2020 Hattie broke out of our garage to chase a wild rabbit in her front yard, unfortunately she chased it right into the side of a moving vehicle.  I often hear "I'm so sorry your dog was hit by a car" to which I most frequently reply "no she actually hit the car".  After a long night in the emergency vet we received the call that everything was OK.  She had no broken bones or internal injuries, only a concussion and some bumps and bruises.  To my dismay, the following morning when I went to pick her up she had no use of her front left leg.  The vet informed me that she suspected a brachial plexus aversion or basically nerve damage to the leg and that she did not think Hatteras would ever regain use of the leg.  I was devastated, as her Dockdogs and NADD career would be over as would her strong drive to swim and chase her beloved ball.  I refused to give up her leg and spent a month taking her to acupuncture and electro-stimulation, all to no avail!  Finally on June 24th 2020 I had the leg amputated.  We were all in tears waiting for her to come out of surgery, and assumed things would never get back to normal.  To my surprise, 8 hours later Hattie came walking out of the hospital, on three legs of course, with little to no help from the nurse.  We are now two and half weeks post surgery and have come to find that Tripawd life fits her just fine.  She is still our beautiful, happy Hatteras!  She is already back to chasing her ball, and may even be just a bit faster than she was before.  As of yesterday she was going off the dock again, swimming easily without her floatcoat, and will surely be back to her former glory as competitive diver.  I truly believe that I underestimated her, I will never make that mistake again.