A stranger gave her ailing dog a wheelchair. Now this N.B. woman is doing the same for others
CBC
It started with her beloved boxer, Tyson. The clues were tiny at first, the sort of thing that would be easy to overlook.
"I noticed his nails would scrape across the pavement as he was walking, just once in awhile," Denise Stewart said from her home in Pennfield, in southwestern New Brunswick.
But it soon became more alarming. Tyson began staggering, dragging himself and, eventually, falling down and not being able to get up.
Distressed, Stewart posted a video of Tyson to Facebook and asked, "What's wrong with my dog?"
A man she didn't know responded from the United States. "I can tell you what's wrong with your dog."
He told her it looked like Tyson had degenerative myelopathy, a slowly progressive, debilitating disease common to boxers and several other breeds, and offered to send her a wheelchair that had belonged to his own dog before it died.
Stewart was moved to tears by the offer.
"I remember the feeling of someone helping me, because I was so desperate for help," she said. "I remember how in my heart I just felt ... there's people out there that really care."
The wheelchair completely changed Tyson's life, giving him and Stewart two more playful years together.
It changed something else as well.
Stewart decided she wanted to share the gift they'd been given. After his death, she founded Tyson's Wonder Wheels in his memory and began offering wheelchairs for dogs, free of charge, to other dog owners whose pets were suffering with degenerative myelopathy.
Soon, requests were coming in from around the world.
In the two years since Stewart started Tyson's Wonder Wheels, the program has provided wheelchairs to more than 700 dogs in Canada, the United States and around the world.
Most of the dogs in question have the same disease that affected Tyson, but some are missing one or more legs or have suffered debilitating injuries.
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