This is Jack, who unfortunately hit under a car and was reversed over. He suffered multiple painful injuries, including broken ribs and a fractured pelvis, which was separated from his spine. Our local veterinary colleagues have done an excellent job of his emergency care and stabilising his pelvis with orthopaedic surgery, but as we join him, he has significant damage to his sciatic nerves and his hind limb function is compromised.

Jack’s owner visited the animal rehabilitation centre and worked tirelessly to help him. We provided ongoing pain relief appropriate to his nerve injuries and showed his dad how to safely hold and support him and all the many important exercises which he carried out every few hours to help Jack feel his feet properly again and get his muscles working with the right strength and timing. At first, Jack would lick and bite his own back feet, causing them damage, and later kick them because his sensations were all wrong. Jack’s dad did a lot of nagging and supervising to make sure that he only relearned good habits, correcting him whenever he knuckled over on his feet and providing him with lots of different sources of stimulation such as tickling, brushing, warm and cold massages, and his least favorite of all, blowing on his paws. He even made Jack his own assault course with lots of different textures to walk on too.

Fortunately, Jack is a keen caravanner, and he took all the traveling, lead walking, and all the new things well in his stride. Jack is off all his medicines now and back to showing off in the garden, even tightrope walking on the slippery garden fence in the dark.

Rehab is not just for dogs; comfortable and confident movement is critical for our cats too.