This little Chihuahua is named TurboRoo. He's six weeks old and weighs less than a pound. Two weeks ago, a breeder in Indianapolis, Ind. dropped him off at The Downtown Veterinarian.
See, TurboRoo was born without any front legs. "The breeder knew that he would need more one on one attention and decided to surrender him," TurboRoo's YouCaring page explains. He has since been adopted by vet tech Ashley Looper.
Right now, Looper has to hold TurboRoo up when he eats while his kennel has been fitted with a water bottle so that he can drink on his own. And he can move around: "He can push himself around with those nubs he does have," Looper told Fox59.
But what TurboRoo really needs is a wheelchair cart. When he turns six months old, he can get fitted with a real cart. In the meantime, the clinic is improvising. The first attempt? A cart made from a disassembled Fisher Price toy.
("The wheels didn't work and it was actually too heavy for him.")
Next up: The kind folks at Lowes Home Improvement made him a cart out of copper wiring (is every Lowes employee an angel or what?) "Still flimsy but an improvement," Looper wrote on Instagram.
"We need the cart so he can get support on his front end," Dr. Trish Wiggers says. "So he can move around more naturally and use legs more naturally and his back. So, there is not stress put on all his other joints."
The clinic started taking donations to raise money for TurboRoo's wheelchair, also setting up a YouCaring page. On the latter alone, he has already raised $1,545 of the $600 goal.
Once TurboRoo gets his special cart, he's on to bigger and better things. Mainly, getting trained as a therapy dog. "He definitely has a different personality because he is handicapped. He is just spunkier," Looper says.
"In the morning, he is alert and ready to go and you see him walk and he is just happy!"