Partially Paralyzed Dog Starts Walking and Wagging His Tail in His New Home

Ward was hit by a car and lost the use of his rear legs—but PT and his new mom have helped him recover splendidly.

Kellyn Murphy and her family were the adopters every shelter hopes for—especially these days.

The Chattanooga, Tenn., family was looking for their fourth dog, perhaps an older dog or one who'd been waiting a long time to get adopted. They were at the McKamey Animal Center when they spotted Ward, a brown dog with paralyzed rear legs thanks to a hit-and-run accident.

They'd seen him before at a fundraising event and decided to officially say hi.

"We met him first and didn't meet any other dogs," Murphy tells Daily Paws. "We fell in love with him pretty much right away."

After a sleepover trial period, he was theirs. Weeks after his adoption, Ward even began wagging his tail and stood up without his wheelchair—a miraculous result for a dog who was found severely injured beneath a car earlier this year.

Back in January, someone called the animal center to report a stray dog under a car. McKamey's animal protection team went to investigate and found Ward, who they surmised had been hit by a car. He then managed to crawl beneath a parked vehicle.

"When they got on the scene, it was pretty, pretty clear very quickly that he couldn't move his back legs or his tail," says Lauren Mann, director of advancement at the McKamey Animal Center.

Related: Shelter Dog Saves Injured Pup's Life With Blood Donation Before Getting Adopted

The center's veterinary team examined him and found he'd sustained a spinal cord injury that paralyzed him from the waist down. While his injury was serious, Ward was the "sweetest, most happy-go-lucky dog."

He began going to physical therapy twice a week, undergoing hydrotherapy and stretching. Back at the shelter, the staff would continue his stretches and activate his muscles. Mann would see his back legs kick out in his wheelchair, a sign that he was trying to use them.

"[It's] just incredible, so physical therapy has definitely changed his life, and I think long-term he'll be up and walking fully again," Mann says.

He joined the Murphy family on July 11. After a few days of warming up to his new house, Ward is loving his new family, including dog siblings Sage (a mutt), Lilly (a dachshund and beagle mix), and Bucket (a beagle).

In particular, he enjoys the morning "kibble buffet," playing with his brother Bucket, and napping on the coach with his humans.

Physically, Ward, who's about 6, has benefited greatly from his new mom, a physical therapy assistant. Murphy has built him a standing frame to help him get used to bearing his weight, and she'll put a type of sling around his legs to help him take a few steps. Taking a bit of her work home has been fun, and she and Ward recently enjoyed a breakthrough.

Not only had Ward begun to wag his tail again—something he previously hadn't done post-paralysis—but last week he even stood on his own and took a few steps.

"I think he's got a lot of potential to keep improving," Murphy says.

At-home PT aside, she hasn't had to alter her routine much to care for Ward. She helps him with diaper cleanup because he's incontinent, but she says caring for him has added less than an hour of work to her day. And sweet Ward repays her with plenty of kisses.

"He's so sweet," she says. "He brings so much more joy into our lives than it would ever take work to take care of him."

That's good advice for anyone thinking of adopting a disabled dog. They almost always sit in shelters for much longer than "regular" dogs. (Ward was officially available for adoption for more than three months, and Mann says he would've been adopted much sooner without his paralysis.)

But when that day did come, "everybody started crying," Mann says. Ward was one of almost 32,000 pets who found forever homes during the Bissell Pet Foundation's Summer National Empty the Shelters event during July.

The campaign's name distills Murphy's desire: "We just wanted to get one out of the shelter.

"It's just we love dogs, I guess," she says. "There's no great explanation."

Read the original article on dailypaws.