She was discovered in December 2020, dying in a forest in Krasnodar, southwest of Russia. Monika, a young Russian bitch, is a miracle. She regained the use of her four legs thanks to the complex fitting of titanium prostheses, a rare, expensive operation, and funded entirely online. Operated two weeks ago, the little creature with the beige coat is obviously still tired and fearful. But she’s walking.
This is the story of a miracle girl: Monika, a Russian bitch, has regained the use of her four paws after the fitting of prostheses, a rare operation and funded entirely online #AFP pic.twitter.com/DutQPc6sPT
– Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) November 22, 2021
A suspected act of cruelty
“Luck and experience played a big role,” says Sergey Gorchkov, the 33-year-old veterinarian behind this feat in the “Best” clinic in Novosibirsk, Siberia. This is the first time that he has performed a quadruple transplant on a dog, an operation he had already performed on a cat in 2019. About thirty other of his “patients” have benefited from artificial limb poses.
Monika has come back from afar. Her four legs were nothing but gaping, bloody wounds when she was found. “Nobody knows what happened to him, some volunteers think that someone cut off his legs out of cruelty,” says Sergey Gorchkov. Poor Monika, whose age is estimated between 2 and 4 years, could then have known the fate of thousands of stray dogs found injured: euthanasia or, worse, a slow and painful death.
Nearly 5,000 euros collected to save the dog
But that was without counting the mobilization of a group of volunteers from Krasnodar. Alla Leonkina claimed to have taken care of the dog with a friend for almost a year after her discovery. “She was in terrible shape. While treating the animal, this Russian thinks of Doctor Gorchkov’s clinic. Then, last spring, an online prize pool was launched to give Monika new life.
In the space of a month, the group collects more than 400,000 rubles (4,800 euros), a significant sum in Russia. There is still one problem: transporting Monika to Novosibirsk, 4,000 kilometers away. “She took the plane with me, sitting in a passenger seat,” says Alla Leonkina.
Monika’s guardian angels also financed the making of the prostheses, made using a 3D printer. One of the animal’s legs broke during the first installation, forcing the vet to repeat a test two months later. Now, he explains, everything is fine. Monika’s bones will be able to grow and adapt naturally to the prostheses, which, according to him, will become like “the antlers on the head of a deer”.