Dexter has learnt to walk like a human all the time. Yes, he is bipedal. He lost his front right leg entirely and lost the use of the left front leg in a traffic accident when he was a year old after he escaped his yard chasing a deer and ran in front of a vehicle. They built a cradle for him to get around, but he shunned it and one day decided to walk tall. It shocked his owners. They couldn’t figure out how he had got from A to B and suddenly found out when he did it again.
Dexter is not a massive celebrity in his hometown of Ouray, Colorado, USA. Everyone chases after him when he is in the main street with their smartphones videoing him. It is a classic example of how something terrible can lead to something wonderful in a complete life change.
It is also a classic example of how wonderfully adaptive both cats and dogs are when they lose a limb or two. You have probably seen cats with no forelegs hopping around like kangaroos perfectly mobile and happy.
I have a concern about Dexter’s welfare. He has obviously built up muscle strength in his back, rump and hind legs. That’s a consequence of walking like this. His back muscles will feel like steel. Hard muscle.
But what about his hip joints? Are they going to wear down prematurely due to the extreme stress of walking bipedal and placing all that weight on two joints rather than four?
And the angle is wrong. There should be a right angle (90 degrees) between the spine and the leg. Here is it at 180 degrees. I can foresee some of the joy of seeing him become a star and coping so successfully being lost when he feels discomfort in his hip joints.
I have just learned that Dexter visits a chiropractor regularly (all on his own walking in the front door as a human ??), who says his back is strong and his hips are pure muscle. Yes, as I expected but what about the actual hip joint? The cartilage, tendons and ligaments?
Perhaps I am being too pessimistic. I don’t know.
