Hi,

I am so happy to have found this site. I live in Australia and we adopted a little Jack Russell from the Animal Welfare League. She was rescued from a bad home at 5 months with a badly damaged right back leg. The owner had not sought treatment and it had healed in a terrible position and Tess was just dragging it around.

They took the decision to amputate and on the day that she came up for adoption, we got her! She is an absolute joy, bouncy as a tigger and just so happy she could burst. You cannot help but smile when she is around and she is so loved by  my 2 boys (even the grumpy hubby admits she is a great addition to the family). 

She is 14 months now and well settled into our family life (in fact, she is the boss and goes wherever she wants, whenever she wants). At the moment there is no stopping her, she runs upstairs, jumps on our beds, hops from lounge chair to lounge chair, even gets onto the outside dining table to hunt for leftovers when we leave the table!

I know that the day will come though when that little back leg with start to show wear and tear and that is why I want to be prepared and know all the options available to us. 

Her back leg is actually slightly bowed out and she walks on the outside of her paw slightly. The vet said that its likely that her growth plates have grown slightly misaligned because she was young when the amputation happened. He says there is nothing that can be done about it. I asked him if there were options if her only back leg became injured or unusable and he said that there were "wheels" that could be considered. On this site there are wheelchairs for 3 legged dogs but does anybody know what the options are if a dog has no back legs at all?  Only asking so I am prepared, I hope that its many years until I seriously have to consider this

Ren