This is the first part of a three-part special report by NBC5’s Medical Reporter Dr. Robin Miller. “Max’s Story” tells of the unconditional love and compassion shared between dogs and humans.
Watch Part 2 on NBC5 News at 6pm on Wednesday, August 29th.
Max’s Story is sponsored by Southern Oregon Subaru.
Here a transcript of the story:
Max was brought to the Southern Oregon Humane Society also known as SO Humane, by a young homeless man who could no longer care for him. Max was taken in immediately. The workers reassured the young man that they would take good care of Max. Those at SO Humane realized he was an older dog and noticed an odd walk. They set about looking for a home. They also wanted to find out why Max had such an odd gait. And not only was Max having an issue with his gait, he also was an older dog. And so he had a couple of challenges that we knew we were going to have to overcome.
Karen Evans, Executive Director SO Humane said, “We actually had a couple who was known to us reach out to us and ask specifically about him. but they wanted to know what they were getting into. They realized that he had potentially some issues and wanted to know what they could expect in terms of, you know, expense and life expectancy and all of those things.
“And so we had them talk with Doctor Wicklund, who’s our veterinarian here at so Humane. And she suggested that Max have an MRI, which for us is cost prohibitive. And so we were so disappointed because we thought, oh my gosh, this isn’t going to work out.
“And we thought maybe we had found a potential family for him. But when I explained that to this couple, they, offered to pay for the MRI and for Max to be transported up to the Portland area to have it done. And the MRI showed that at some point Max had some type of either spinal injury or spinal infection that was more than likely never treated, so it didn’t heal properly. but by this time, the couple that was interested in him had already fallen in love with him. And decided that they would adopt him anyway.
“He ran around and didn’t know he was different from any other dog. And it was really pretty amazing to see how resilient he was and how it just really didn’t faze him.”
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