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Amputee Rescued from Bosnia Rescues 3-Legged Great Dane

When Maja Kazazic of Palm Harbor, Fla., was living in Bosnia years ago, she was severely injured by a bomb blast that killed all her friends.

The 16-year-old’s left leg became infected and had to be amputated. To her surprise, she was rescued by a stranger and eventually came to the United States.

Yesterday, Kazazic made a rescue of her own. The athlete, entrepreneur and motivational speaker adopted a three-legged Great Dane named Rosie.

Rosie, now 16 months old, was just a puppy when her mother stepped on her and broke her rear right leg. As with Kazazic, Rosie’s leg became infected and had to be partially amputated.

Rosie’s breeder wanted her to be euthanized, but thanks to Kazazic, the Great Dane’s life was spared.

“I felt this instant kinship because I have this affinity for things that are rescued,” Kazazic told FOX 13. “Being a rescued person myself, someone who should have died, it was really an instant connection.”

Kazazic found out about Rosie through the Hanger Clinic, which created her prosthetic leg as well as the prosthetic tail for Winter, the dolphin made famous in the heartwarming 2011 film, “Dolphin Tale” and its 2014 sequel, “Dolphin Tale 2.” *

Rosie’s veterinarian contacted the Hanger Clinic after the dog’s leg was amputated. Clinician Peter DiPaolo told FOX 13 the vet knew about the prosthetic dolphin tail. “He asked, ‘Can you guys make a prosthetic leg for a dog?’ and I said, ‘Absolutely.'”

The personalities of the dolphin and dog were similar, DiPaolo said. “They were both kids when they first were fit, and we’re going to see her all along the way,” he told FOX 13.

DiPaolo called Kazazic, who’d wanted a Great Dane since she was a young girl, and told her about Rosie.

“He said, ‘You’ve got to meet Rosie, you guys would be perfect,’ and I said, ‘Who’s Rosie?,’” Kazazic told FOX 13. “He said, ‘She’s a Great Dane that wears a prosthetic leg.'”

As Rosie grows (to about 135 pounds), instead of learning to walk on three legs, she will probably continue to need a prosthesis. Kazazic said her vet told her larger dogs have more difficulty balancing on three legs.

“I saw what happened to her and literally fell in love,” Kazazic told FOX 13 about her new best friend. “It was like the other half of me.”

You can follow their adventures on the Rosie the Great Dane Facebook page.

A similar “pawfect” match was made in April, when the family of 3-year-old Sapphyre Johnson, who had a birth defect that left her without some toes and fingers, adopted a white German Shepherd puppy born without a right front paw.

As with Rosie, other breeders advised Karen Riddle, of Greenville, S.C., to euthanize the puppy, who the Johnson family named Lt. Dan. But unlike Rosie’s breeder, Riddle said, No way! She knew this special puppy would be the perfect companion for a child with a disability — and she was right.

The Shriners Hospital for Children, which made Sapphyre’s prosthetic legs, has promised to make a prosthetic paw for Lt. Dan when he’s fully grown.

Photos via Twitter, Facebook

* iStillLoveDogs.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program. If you click these links and buy the DVDs, iStillLoveDogs.com will receive a small percentage of the purchase price.

After Car Wreck, Dog Survives 7 Weeks Alone in Yellowstone

As they drove along a road in Yellowstone National Park July 23, David Sowers and Laura Gillice’s SUV was hit head-on by another vehicle.

Sowers’ dog Jade, an 18-month-old Australian Shepherd, ran off after a park ranger opened a door of the wrecked SUV.

“I was convinced she was gone,” Sowers told 9News. “I thought she’d probably gone three or four miles deep into the woods.”

Sowers and Gillice, who were both seriously injured in the crash, posted signs around the park, set traps using their clothing and food, and created a Facebook page.

The couple returned to Yellowstone several times from their home in Denver to try to find Jade, with no luck. About 25 people helped them look for the missing Aussie, playing recordings of Sowers calling to Jade on their cellphones.

Sowers and Gillice refused to give up hope, although they were worried about Jade being able to survive on her own.

“The wolves were a concern, of course,” Gillice told 9News. “And just the wildlife and the bears.”

As the weeks passed, several Jade sightings were reported in the Canyon Village area.

About a week ago, Sowers and Gillice (who is an agility trainer with the American Kennel Club) returned yet again to Yellowstone. This time Gillice brought her Australian Shepherd, Leila, along. Leila and Jade are good buddies.

Early each morning, Gillice took Leila for a walk around the Canyon Village area, encouraging her to bark and hopefully attract Jade’s attention.

While walking Leila Friday morning, 43 days after the car accident, Gillice passed a couple who had stopped to take pictures.

“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this black-and-white movement,” Gillice told the Missoulian. “I asked the couple, because they had binoculars, ‘Is that a deer or a dog?’ She said, ‘It’s a dog.’”

Gillice called Jade’s name. “She just came running to me, like, ‘Where’ve you been, mom?’” she said.

She leashed Jade and walked both dogs back to the hotel where she was staying with Sowers. When the dog dad saw his long-lost Jade, it was a “hugfest,” Gillice told the Missoulian.

“I saw Jade running in the front door and I just lost it,” Sowers told 9News. “She just got up on me and bawled and cried for a long time.”

Sowers said Jade is “skin and bones,” and she has a small cut on her lip, but otherwise she seems to be perfectly fine — which is pretty remarkable considering that she spent seven weeks on her own in the wild.

“She was self sufficient,” Gillice told 9News.

Sowers told the Missoulian he was grateful for all the volunteers who tried to find Jade. “A lot of people have just dedicated their weekends to looking for her,” he said.

“It’s amazing. We didn’t think we’d ever see her again.”

Photos via Facebook

Service Dogs Help Farmers with Disabilities Do Their Jobs

One of the most helpful farmhands on Alda Owen’s 260-acre property in Maysville, Mo., has four legs.

Sweet Baby Jo, a Border Collie, is an expert at rounding up cattle. This is especially handy since Owen is legally blind and can only clearly see objects close at hand.

“She’s made it possible for me to be a productive person, to keep the life we’ve built,” Owen told the Associated Press.

Troy Balderston, who became a quadriplegic after a 2010 car accident, has a Border Collie named Duke to thank for helping him continue to work on a feedlot in Norton, Kansas.

“Duke keeps me safe, he keeps the cattle from running me over,” Balderston told the AP. “He goes everywhere I go. He’s a great worker and a great companion.”

Bruce Trammell suffered a brain injury in 2008. His yellow Lab, Odie, helps him with his chores on his Missouri farm.

“It’s like a dream come true,” Trammell told the Mizzou Weekly when Odie arrived in 2012. “Not only is he going to be my buddy, but he’s going to be my right hand and stabilize me [from falling] so I can do the things I need to do.”

Sweet Baby Jo, Duke and Odie were provided to these farmers free of charge by the nonprofit organization P.H.A.R.M. Dog USA. (PHARM stands for Pets Helping Agriculture in Rural Missouri.)

The organization’s mission is to “train dogs to assist farmers with a disability or a disease that need the help of a four-legged farmhand to help them remain active and independent on their farm operations,” according to its website.

P.H.A.R.M. Dog USA was created by Jackie Allenbrand, who formerly worked for the University of Missouri AgrAbility program, and it became a 501c3 organization in 2012. It has matched 10 dogs with farmers in four Midwestern states.

“People think of farmers as rugged and tough,” Allenbrand told the AP. “When you see a big, burly farmer crying after they get a dog because they know they can keep farming, you see what a difference it’s making. That’s what drives us.”

P.H.A.R.M. Dog USA trains both herding and service dogs to help farmers with disabilities. Border Collies are trained to herd and control animals (I’m guessing not a whole lot of training is required), while Labradors and Lab mixes learn to perform chores like fetching tools and carrying buckets.

It can be a challenge to match a dog’s skills with what a farmer requires, P.H.A.R.M. Dog USA trainer Don McKay, who is also a farmer, told the AP. He said it sometimes takes a few days for the dog and farmer to get in sync.

The dogs in the program are donated or rescued from shelters. The funds to train them are provided by agriculture rehabilitation groups and some grants. Cargill Nutrition donates food for the trainees.

Allenbrand told the AP she’s been getting requests from farmers across the country for service dogs, but currently doesn’t have the budget to provide them. She hopes to eventually get corporate sponsorships.

“There are farmers all over the country who need this service,” she told the AP. “It’s important that we help them.”

To make a donation to P.H.A.R.M. Dog USA, click here.

Photos via Facebook; Facebook

Katrina Survivor Boots Is Now Arizona Shelter’s ‘Kitten Whisperer’

This story was originally published Oct. 27, 2014.

The furriest volunteer at the Arizona Humane Society’s kitten nursery in Phoenix is 13-year-old Boots, a survivor of Hurricane Katrina.

AHS staff call Boots, a Chow/Golden Retriever mix who started working at the shelter in October 2014, the “Kitten Whisperer.”

Boots reports for duty every Wednesday. Kittens between the ages of 5 and 8 weeks old are allowed to snuggle up to him, so shelter staff can observe how well they’ll do with potential adopters who have dogs.

“He’s so relaxed,” Bretta Nelson, public relations manager for the AHS, told the Arizona Republic. “We bring him in, he sniffs the tents, he sniffs (the kittens). You can see their reaction, who’s curious and will just come up to Boots or will want to go slow.”

Boots “was rescued from the flooded streets in New Orleans after Katrina with severe chemical burns to his feet,” wrote Corinne Williams, a veterinary tech with AHS, in a comment on its Facebook page. “Now he is giving back by potentially saving other fellow creatures’ lives. Go Boots!”

According to the AHS website, studies show that kittens have a small window of time in which their exposure to new things will have an impact on their ability to adapt to changes when they become adults. The kitten nursery, which opened in May 2014, exposes them to “home life,” including riding in cars, the sound of a vacuum, children — and dogs.

“By bringing a dog nanny in, we’re exposing these kittens to a lot of different things,” Nelson said. “In the end, they will be adaptable and more adoptable.”

She said having Boots as a volunteer is a win-win for everyone involved.

“Boots loves it. Most of the kittens love it. Some are very scared at first, but the whole thought is to get them acclimated to being around dogs.”

Photos via Facebook

10 Years Later, Rescued Katrina Dogs Reunite

The images from 10 years ago still break the heart: Dogs forced to be left behind in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, struggling to stay alive on the roofs of their New Orleans houses and frantically swimming across flooded streets.

Hundreds of animal rescuers who were moved by those images made their way to New Orleans in 2004, doing whatever they could to save displaced pets.

Among them were dog trainer Anne Trupo, veterinarian Lisa Hart and Amy Beichler of the Public Animal Welfare Society (PAWS Ohio), who drove down in a caravan from their Cleveland homes. They rescued 18 dogs and 12 cats, including a mixed-breed dog the women named Hurricane.

“It was 117 degrees and we were overwhelmed,” Trupo told The Plain Dealer. “We were asking people about trapped dogs and one woman told us about a mean dog she locked in a bathroom. We went into the abandoned house and found Hurricane. He had been locked away for a week and was crazy with heat and starvation.”

Hurricane was a smart dog — he figured out how to turn on the bathroom’s water faucet, which kept him alive.

Homeland Security officers alerted the women to another abandoned dog, a German Shepherd with a broken leg who’d been left in a yard with no food or water.

“They said they had been feeding the dog, but that he needed help,” Trupo told The Plain Dealer. “We found him. I put my hand through the fence and Storm just laid his head on my hand. We broke through the fence and saved him.”

The women drove Storm and the other animals they’d saved back to Ohio.

All of these four-legged Katrina refugees found forever homes — or at least places to stay until their original owners were able to take them back. Trupo fostered and then adopted Storm. Matt Harmon of South Euclid, Ohio, became Hurricane’s dog dad.

“Hurricane and I were best friends from first eye contact,” Harmon told The Plain Dealer. “He trusted me right away and I let him know I was there to stay. He was very sick at first, infected with parasites and extremely underweight. He and Storm had heartworms, which are tough (often fatal) to treat, but he recovered.”

For the first time in 10 years, Hurricane and Storm were reunited at Forest Hills Park in East Cleveland this week. The Plain Dealer reports that Storm, now 11 years old, seemed to instantly recognize his old buddy. The two seniors spent half an hour playing and chasing each other around the park.

“Oh, he’s gonna feel that tonight,” Trupo said. “He’s an old dog and he does not get around as well as he used to, but that’s not stopping him today.”

Watching Hurricane play with Storm, Harmon told The Plain Dealer, “He’s going to be a tough act for another dog to follow. While I’m sure he won’t be my last dog, he’ll always be my best dog.”

The death of so many abandoned pets in the aftermath of Katrina who weren’t as fortunate as Hurricane and Storm, as well as the deaths of pet parents who refused to leave their loved ones behind, led to the passing of the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act (PETS Act) of 2006. This law requires shelters to be provided for people as well as pets after a disaster.

As its summary states, “Hurricane Katrina has clearly shown that when given a choice between their own personal safety or abandoning their household pets, a significant number of people will choose to risk their lives in order to remain with their pets.”

Photos via Twitter

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