David Turnbill

Multimedia: Front-wheel drive

For a two-legged puppy, Hope gets around.

The sprightly Maltese can bounce across a room at a break-neck pace. Rounding her small back, she uses her hind legs to propel her body forward onto her chest, which has small wriggling nubs where her front legs should be.

“She gets around fine,” said the puppy’s rehabilitation specialist, Cassy Englert of River Veterinary Emergency Clinic on Amnicola Highway. “She never knew anything other than hopping like she did. ... The hardest thing is teaching her a new way to get around that’s going to actually be better for her.”

A Chattanooga orthotist with Dynamic Prosthetic & Orthotic on McCallie Avenue created a device he hoped would give Hope a more normal gait.

“Once she quits growing and gets to her full size, she will need another one,” local orthotist David Turnbill said. “Prosthetic care is an ongoing cycle.”

Squirming across the floor of the vet clinic a couple months ago, Hope seemed blissfully unaware of the bemused smiles or concerned winces of those around her.

But her natural mode of moving eventually would damage her bones, experts said.

“They can always pad her chest, but it’s her spine that’s taking a beating,” Ms. Englert said.

Mr. Turnbill of Dynamic Prosthetic constructed a device, free of charge, with makeshift shoulder joints connected to model airplane wheels. The spring-loaded prosthetic arms hook to a custom-fitted chest plate to allow Hope to lay down or sit up without removing the prosthetic, he said.

Each of the device’s “arms” can move up or down independently of the other, allowing Hope to pivot and turn, Mr. Turnbill said.

“We’re allowing all of her natural motions to occur,” he said.

For a couple sessions this winter, Mr. Turnbill and Ms. Englert worked with Hope to see if she could learn to rely on the wheeled device to support her upper torso.

Veterinarian Jennifer Kolb at the Red Bank Animal Hospital said that dogs and cats typically adjust easily to a prosthetic device.

“If you have the right client and the right type of pet, they can do great with it,” she said. “Dogs and cats, they’re very resilient.”

Hope’s condition is a result of a bad breeding, said Mary Dube of the Chattanooga-based Southern Comfort Maltese Rescue. The group took the puppy in last summer after being contacted by a rescue group in Oklahoma.

“We took her in when she was 6 weeks old because the people who had her said her litter mates were pushing her away from Mama and the food bowl and she wasn’t getting enough to eat,” Ms. Dube said.

After a painstaking call for applications, the group identified a suitable adoptive owner for the dog in the fall. The new owner, Debra Huebner, of Phoenix, picked up Hope at Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport in December.

Ms. Huebner has five Yorkies and now two Maltese, and she and her husband have a proven record of going the distance for their pets, including paying veterinarians for whatever medical care their animals needed, Ms. Dube said.

“They went the full nine yards,” Ms. Dube said.

The Huebners said they have arranged their work schedule — one working first shift, one working second shift — so Hope never would have to be alone.

Ms. Huebner said Hope is getting along fine with other dogs during her first few weeks in Phoenix.

“She doesn’t know it,” she said. “She has no concept that she’s not a normal dog.”

Though Hope already has outgrown the prosthetic device that was custom-sized to her puppy frame, her new owners say they hope to get her a new device made by a Phoenix company.

The orthotist-prosthetists here said they took on the challenge of helping Hope because they said it was an opportunity to learn something new.

“It’s nice to do something different. ... Anytime we adapt something to a body, whether animal or human, we tend to learn something from it,” said Locke Davis, owner of Dynamic Prosthetic & Orthotic.

Hope’s rehabilitation specialist in Chattanooga said that when it comes to rehabilitation, working with animals can be better than working with humans.

“They’re more resourceful than we are in figuring things out,” Ms. Englert said. “They want to get back up on the feet, they want to run, play. ... People, they get discouraged more.”