Bionic Bravo


Posted on Oct 10, 2007
By Julia Szabo

The Bionic Vet and StormWho needs a sci-fi bionic dog when you can have a real one? As reported in The Telegraph, and Time a Belgian Shepherd named Storm was diagnosed with cancer in his right forepaw and underwent surgery to amputate the extremity. His people, Francesca and Derek Taylor of Surrey, UK, took him to the right place: the state-of-the-art orthopedic and neurosurgery hospital of veterinarian Noel Fitzpatrick, a.k.a. The Bionic Vet. Dr. Fitzpatrick cemented a titanium alloy implant to the main bone of Storm's foreleg, with a metal flange that mimics the quality of deer antlers; an artificial paw, made of laminated carbon fiber, plugs in to the implant.

Thanks to Dr. Fitzpatrick, Storm is now the world's first dog to be outfitted with a working prosthetic paw, and the first documented case in which metal and living tissue have bonded. OK, so Storm can't run at 90 mph like Max, Jaime Sommers' K9 sidekick on the original Bionic Woman series (Max, as it happens, was also a Shepherd – a German Shepherd). But this three-pawed dog is active enough to have worn out four prosthetic feet to date. No worries: Dr. Fitzpatrick tells Fetchdog that a team of designers, Formula One racing mechanics among them, are busy at work fabricating the ultimate high-performance foot for Storm.

This "bionic" dog may not be stronger or faster, but he's certainly better than he was before. And that means us mere humans could be next: "Because it has been implanted into the radius of the forearm of the dog, [the technology] will act as a model for human amputees in the future, and provides hope for people without feet or hands," Dr. Fitzpatrick says.

Related article: "The Bionic Vet"

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