05/09/2023
This is a very good teaching moment I thought I would share. I couldn’t share directly as I found in a private grooming group, but have permission to share. The owner does a great job at explaining so I won’t add to it, except to say this is fully preventable with consistent grooming!
Please ask any questions you have!
***WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT***
Pics of matted and then being healthy and happy first, and further in you'll find pics of his shave down that include blood, exposed bone, nasty teeth, etc. It's really sad.
TL;DR: toy poodle, self-amputated limbs due to extreme longterm matting, and he lived happily ever after.
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Ok everyone, here is Amaze-Bobb! 4.5 lbs toy poodle, with 2 legs due to tightly matted fur self-amputating them.
First, yes you may use his photos for education. He is a very worst case scenario but I think it's valuable to be able to show people the kind of severe damage that matting can do. It's not just a tangled coat. It's painful and can cause damage to their body.
His story:
Bobb was seized by animal control in January 2015. I got in touch with the major case unit officer in charge of his case and learned that he was living in a garage with a very old woman. She was likely unable to care for him- but at that point someone was taking care of her so regardless someone knew he was like this, suffering, and did nothing. Anyway, by best guess he was ~10 years old (standard "dog is old but not ancient" guess) and had never had a haircut, or at least not for many years.
At the shelter, he was sedated and shaved the day after being seized. What they found was horrific. Honestly if I had been there and seen the damage I don't think I would have advocated for waking him up, but they must have seen something in him that made them want to give him a chance. I am forever grateful they did because he should have been a nasty little untouchable jerk, but he was so sweet and loving and full of life. He still had *so* much quality life left.
His back left leg had been completely self-amputated and was only held to him by his fur. It came off when they were shaving him. His front right paw was on by a thread, swollen and necrotic, so they clipped it there- I wish they had gone to the elbow joint as he would jam his nub into the floor when he'd stumble which was quite painful for him. X-ray pic included to show how sharp that bone was in there.
A rescue had him for a week to make sure he was decently stable and to do some vet visits, then my husband and I fostered him for a week. Back to rescue for a week for a couple more appointments, and again we took him for another week. That's all it took for us to be totally in love with him. We were just about to put our house on the market and move out of state, so we worked it out for the rescue to hang onto him during our house selling and moving process, and he came to live with us in Colorado in June 2015. He's the only foster we've kept of the dozens we've had.
We did try to get him a prosthetic but his back nub wasn't a good option, and his front we tried and even took a mold of his nub but after evaluation they gave a slim chance of success with high risk of pain. We did physical therapy appointments weekly for several months to start, and weaned down to monthly. I worked with him religiously twice a day on his exercises at home. We also immediately started training to tolerate grooming. It took me 3 months of daily desensitizing and counter-conditioning to be able to do his nails cooperatively; we forced it twice by burrito-ing him and just doing it. I had a groomer who allowed me in back of her shop to help hold him, and she taught me some good poodle basics. I used a 10 for face feet sanitary, and 5F for body. Scissored his ears for ~6 months and then would hit them with the 5F.
After a year of physical therapy he started agility classes! He was doing cavaletti bars on the ground so I thought hey, why not? His rehab team approved it. He learned it all and could do everything except a full height A-frame. Not enough momentum to go up, and we didn't want the impact on the way down. Teeth and DW were with leash clipped to harness just in case, but he never wobbled.
Bobb left us in March 2018, over 3 years from the day he was rescued. It's been over 5 years and I still talk about him almost every day.
Videos and a gazillion more pics: https://www.facebook.com/amazebobb
