For animal lovers, it’s hard to imagine how a young dog ends up homeless on the streets of Rochester, New York – and even harder to understand how a hit and run driver left him on the side of the road with a broken leg after being dragged under the car. But thankfully, that’s where things took a turn for the better for him, after good Samaritans who witnessed the accident took him to the city shelter for help.
“This guy had a very rough start,” said Cristina Cadavieco, DVM, Medical Director at Lollypop Farm, the Humane Society of Greater Rochester, where the dog landed after the shelter called on them for help with the case. “He clearly had not had any real vet care previously. He came to us with bad road rash and a long, oblique fracture of his right rear leg.”
A vet tech at Lollypop Farm named him Creed, after a character on the TV show The Office and Dr. Cadavieco reached out to Ursula Krotscheck, DVM, DACVS-SA, chief of small animal surgery at the Cornell University Hospital for Animals to evaluate his injury.
“Lollypop Farms has referred complicated orthopedic cases to us for years,” Dr. Krotscheck said. “It was a bad fracture with soft tissue trauma and since he had been injured for days before coming to us, the risk of complications goes up.”
With an expensive estimate for the surgery and the window of time closing rapidly to save Creed’s leg, Dr. Krotscheck reached out to Arthrex Vet Systems Sales Representative Amy Higginbotham and Vet Systems Director of National Sales and Business Development Drew Maddalone for help. Arthrex donated a 10-hole 3.5 mm OrthoLine™ plate and the positional 3.5 mm screws needed to repair Creed’s fractured leg.
“Thanks to Arthrex, this dog still has a leg,” said Dr. Krotsceck. “The fact that Arthrex is willing to donate products to cases like Creed’s is very rare and very much appreciated. These plates are excellent products that come in a wide variety of sizes, giving us the ability to customize the implant to what the animal needs during surgery.”
Today, Creed is still recovering at Lollypop Farms and has a good to excellent prognosis for living a healthy, normal life.
“We really are so grateful; amputation was the only other option for him. Orthopedic procedures take a lot of care, money and time,” said Dr. Cadavieco. “Now we just hope we can find him a good family who will give him the life he deserves.”
