How many times in life would you think you could have a completely paralyzed dog? I wouldn’t think it could happen to me more than once. In mid-January, Donatello had a seemingly minor injury to his back, which caused him back pain for about three weeks, but it didn’t seem serious, so he was put on rest regime and received some manual therapy.

Out of nowhere, overnight, he became completely paralyzed in all four legs. All limbs completely numb, no muscle tone. The front legs were worse than the hind legs. He had no control over them at all. The situation was quite serious, and being 13 years old, with severe heart problems, it was difficult to find a solution. Certain examinations requiring anesthesia were not possible. Therefore, we opted for a conservative treatment approach.

The progress was very slow… but it was there. What usualy took a week based on my previous experience, took a month to Donatello.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Iva Štěpánková Štrbáňová, who treated Donatello using osteodynamics and squeezed us into her extremely busy schedule multiple times. I would also like to thank our veterinarian, Dr. Pikous, for his healing cocktails. And of course, my family, who helped me create a supportive environment for a bedridden patient.

The rest of the rehabilitation was carried out at home because, due to time constraints, I currently do not have the possibility to travel elsewhere. We combined manual techniques (Dorn method, Tellington T-Touch) with improvised hydrotherapy in our bathtub and attempted reflexive walking whenever we moved the patient around the house (and there were plenty of those every day!).

I won’t lie, at a certain point, after about two months when Donatello was still lying down and had lost all his muscle everywhere, I had come to terms with the fact that he simply wouldn’t walk again. I started looking for wheelchairs for paralyzed dogs in all four limbs and even sewed him several prototypes of support harnesses.

But suddenly, things took a turn, and during two hydrotherapy sessions, he first regained movement in his hind legs, then in his front legs. And on Easter, he stood up and started walking… It was a miracle <3