Harveys story

You’ve heard us celebrate Harveys birthday and welcome him to our physiotherapy club. But today we wanted to share Harveys remarkable story of a dog thirsty for life and a loving owner who does everything she can to make his years comfy and happy, as this dog is in no way ready to give up!

Years ago he ruptured his cruciate ligament. A common issue. He had highly successful surgery and was very happy, but as the years progressed he started to become arthritic. This happens to the best of us, but the owner wanted to make sure she was doing all she could for him. So for the past few years she has been bringing him for physiotherapy so he can maintain his strength and flexibility. Due to skin issues he was on medication that limited his pain relief options, but with the physiotherapy and some weight loss, he was perfectly comfortable. Over the years he had various hiccups like sores on his paws, but he always followed his walk regime and did his exercises with a distinct smile on his face.

More recently life got more complicated. He developed a highly complicated form of diabetes that needed total owner dedication to stabilize. Luckily he had the right mum and she never left his side through all the tests. He still wasn’t ready to give up, and gradually the diabetes improved and Harvey celebrated his 12th birthday!

For an unexpected twist, poor Harvey very suddenly lost his sight! He was given time to see if he would adapt as many would, but he was finally starting to find it all too much and he was too scared to go on walks or bother to bark at the postman. His mum couldn’t bear to see him so sad so she decided to make the difficult decision to have surgery to remove the katerax in his eyes.

It is now 3 weeks since his surgery and we are over the moon to report Harvey is now fully sighted and happily walking around with confidence again! It was a delight to see him walk into the consult room today, and look right at me! I feel confident he was saying “check me out, I can see again!”

Now the physiotherapy can go back to focusing on getting him strong again, as he did have a little while of not doing enough exercise!

We are so proud of you Harvey and of your dedicated mum too!