[panting]
Derrick: Every day, I help an animal walk again.
♪♪
[cheering]
Man: You have performed a miracle.
Woman: This journey is one of triumph.
[kissing sound]
Derrick: That's what this is all about.
♪♪
Woman 2: I got Olive at eight weeks old.
As a therapist, I was looking for a dog to introduce
into my private practice to be a therapy dog.
Olive is a very calm, loving, smart puppy,
and she's my six-month-old golden retriever.
Olive was born with a deformed paw.
She limps.
Usually when people are coming into my office,
they're very stressed or upset, sad, they have a lot going on,
so to just be able to have this dog come and greet you,
you can see the joy on people's faces immediately.
She'll lay with people, lick them,
and they just love her.
She's, I think, the perfect therapy dog.
I'm hoping that she can live the best life that she can.
I just want to make sure that she's, like, not in pain,
and can move around as easily as possible.
♪♪
- How's it goin'?
Meghan: Good.
- All right, hey, Olive!
You are like the cutest dog-- whoa.
You're the cutest dog ever!
Tell me a little bit about Olive.
Meghan: She limps quite a bit.
If I take her for a walk or she'll play with another dog,
it's usually two to three days of her getting back
to her normal self.
- Yeah, what happens with these guys
is their other front leg or wrist will start to collapse,
to the point where she wouldn't want to walk
on that leg either, and then you gotta be confined
or restricted to a cart.
Let me see you walk a little bit, Olive.
There you go.
On command, look at you.
You know, there's bones missing...
she's fused right at the wrist, right here.
And then these toes are a little hypermobile
because of this fusion, so she probably gets
a lot of tiny little tears inside her paw,
and that's why she's going up lame.
Meghan: Okay.
- So.
Building her that prosthetic device
is exactly what she needs to keep her going,
keep her moving around with all these dogs,
and not having to have that limp.
I'm gonna go get all my casting supplies.
Meghan: Okay.
- We'll get that cast started.
All right.
[piano music]
All right, so I just met Olive.
Probably one of the cutest dogs I've ever met.
We're gonna make a combination prosthetic orthotic,
it's called a prosthosis.
Basically, that means she's able-bodied,
but she has a leg length discrepancy,
one leg is longer than the other.
So I need to fill that gap, keep her level at the shoulders,
keep her spine aligned,
and she'll be on all fours in no time.
All right, Henry, c'mere, buddy.
C'mon!
So I just finished with Olive's prosthesis,
and we're gonna do the initial fit.
Hopefully everything's fitting perfectly,
and the heights are right,
but it's always up to the animal,
that's always the biggest hurdle is just getting them to use it.
♪♪
So check it out.
There's your booty.
- This is awesome, wow.
Look, Olive!
- What do you think?
You wanna try it out?
All right.
So let's strap it on and see what we can do.
Little bit longer, okay, one more, one more.
- You're all right.
- Shhh.
It's okay.
Good.
We're gonna let her go and see what she does.
Some dogs won't move at all.
You're gonna play the dead leg game.
Yeah, huh?
- C'mere.
[kissing noises]
Here.
Derrick: Yeah, is she doing the kickback?
Yeah, that's okay, that's okay.
- Okay.
Derrick: I'm happy with the fit,
so I might say we can go to a more distracting place,
which is in the lab in the back.
- Yeah, sure.
And uh, does she chase balls?
- Yeah.
- 'Kay, all right.
Olive, let's go!
C'mere, check it out!
Meghan: C'mon, c'mon!
[whistles]
- Okay, good job, let's see what she does.
[dramatic music]
She's kicking that leg back.
It's what they do;
how quickly they stop doing that is always the question.
She's not confident with her paw without the brace,
and this is a foreign object on her,
so it's gonna take a little bit of time
before she realizes she can put weight down on it,
her paw doesn't hurt, it's level.
Yeah, let's just give her a couple runs and see.
[whistles]
Yeah, okay.
I wanna get her putting it down.
- Ready?
Derrick: It's close, there, okay.
[inspirational music]
Yeah, that's looking good!
- There you go, yeah!
Derrick: That was good!
- Yay!
- Tapped it a little bit better that time.
- Good girl!
- Little more weight into it.
- You did it!
- There we go!
- Yeah!
Seeing the transformation is really, like,
an incredible process to see.
- I think she's gonna be fine.
Um, she's gonna get stronger and stronger,
and once she has more control over that leg,
she'll have more control over the device,
and she's gonna be walking, running, doing everything.
- I'm really excited to continue working with her,
and my goal is to see her running as fast as she can
on the beach every morning, so.
That's what I'm hoping for.
- You did so good, buddy.
She's a good girl.
♪♪