Interesting story from the Arizona Republic:
Born with just two feet, George Bailey staggered through his first year of life as an invalid cat, propping himself on his good paws and dragging his stumps behind.Each trip to the food dish was a painful ballet.
Then Tuesday, doctors strapped him to an operating table for two hours, drilled into his right tibia and fastened a prosthetic leg with titanium screws.
If the surgery takes and George Bailey's leg bone grows over the prosthesis, he will be bouncing on a new foot made from spring steel inside of six weeks.
[...]
Simmons and his wife will pay thousands for the surgery at North Carolina State University. But there are implications beyond George Bailey's wobbly gait. He's the first animal fitted with a custom-made prosthesis that fits inside the bone.
In Scandinavia, the same technique has already been applied to humans. A man there was fitted with a detachable thumb, said Greg Thomas, NCSU spokesman.
Fitting a prosthesis inside a bone rather than attaching it to a stump makes a stronger connection, relieving stress on areas of the body that aren't designed to take it.
It is not unlike a total hip replacement, said Dr. Denis Marcellin, who operated on the cat.
And God bless the owners who are willing to pay for such procedures.
An older, retired lady just a few doors down from us recently spent over $6000.00 to save her 8 year old female Maltese. Buttons, (the dog,) had some sort of liver problem, and her owner told me that she never even considered putting Buttons down. Her vet said that surgery could not only save Buttons' life, but fix whatever was ailing her as well, so even though it was a hardship, her owner was more than happy to do what she had to save her beloved dog.
"She's my baby." She said, "What else COULD I have done."