So you can see that it’s a joy to have these dogs because it’s really hard to feel sorry for them. (They’re full of life. They’re just full of life.) I know they’re just full of life.

Hallo, warm-hearted viewers, and welcome to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. On today's program we’ll travel to the quiet hills of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, USA to visit a company that greatly enriches and improves the lives of disabled animal companions.

For the past decade Eddie’s Wheels has been manufacturing wheelchairs for animals with disabilities, thus transforming their lives. They sell over 2,000 carts per year with customers in the US, Greenland, Australia, Namibia, South Africa, Indonesia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Armenia, and a number of European nations. Founded by Eddie and Leslie Grinnell, the company builds a wide array of carts custom- designed to meet the animal’s specific needs, abilities and anatomy.

While most of the company’s clients are dogs, Eddie's Wheels has also supplied wheelchairs for cats, goats, sheep and even a pot-bellied pig. Ms. Grinnell now explains how the business was inspired by their beloved Doberman.

Twenty years ago, we had a dog. She was a Blue Doberman and one morning she woke up paralyzed. I high-tailed it to the vet with my paralyzed dog and was told that I had two choices: A US$10,000 back surgery with a 50% success rate or to euthanize her. Neither of those options worked for me, so I brought her home, and I was on the phone with my husband telling him what our options were. And the dog was listening and she started barking at me from her bed by the wood stove, and she definitely seemed to have an opinion about euthanasia that we should take that option off the table.

So he came home a few days later and consulted with our vets about how to make her some kind of a mobility cart or a wheelchair, because she weighed 80 pounds, and carrying the back end of an 80-pound dog around was hard work for me and wasn’t giving her much of a life. So he looked at the skeleton of the dog and said, "We’re going to support her in a bio-mechanically sound way” and design and built the first “Eddie’s Wheels” wheelchair, never thinking that this would be a business.

This was something he was making (Yes) for his own, individual, wonderful dog. So she used it and just as the carts now it supported her under her pelvic floor and had a yoke over her shoulder blades. And she went for walks every day through the woods. She took six months to heal, but after six months, she started walking again on her own and that was our story. So we thought a miracle had happened.

But our vet said, “Well, what you did was you kept her alive long enough for her spinal injury to heal on its own.” So this gave us a huge insight into an animal’s ability to heal and that the important thing was to give them a good quality of life while healing took place.

One thing we did know from our experience was that there were many people who had been faced with the same sort of critical decisions that we had been faced with. People would stop us on the street and say, “Where did you get that dog wheelchair?” and proceed to tell me about the heart-rending story of the dog that they put down only because of a disability, not because of an illness.

Ten years passed before Eddie decided to leave his job as a mechanical engineer and start a cart business. The Grinnells soon realized that their decision to start the enterprise was right for them. Everything seemed to fall into place.

And then there were so many synchronicities that told us that we were on a path that we needed to follow. We would be sourcing materials. We would tell people what we were doing. People would extend credit to us. Our metal supplier had a policy at his business of allowing dogs to come to work.

When he found out what we were doing, he made sure that we always had metal and he would deliver two sticks at a time, (Wow.) no minimum order, (Yes.) and drop it off at our house. So we were given all of these very encouraging signs from the universe that this was something that we were supposed to do.

Through the years the Grinnells have heard many wonderful, heartfelt success stories about dogs who could become active again through use of their wheelchairs. It fills them with great delight to know they are helping so many disabled dogs to lead happy lives.

This cart was built for a dog named KD. KD was actually a neighbor’s dog. It was the first cart we ever got paid for. And KD became disabled when she was about six, had an unsuccessful back surgery, and as she aged her spine curved more and more and more. So this was her last cart and we made a cart that conformed to the curvature of her spine. So this is our scoliosis cart.

So her hips were here, (Oh, dear.) her body was here (Yes.) and she used this cart for the last year of her life and she died at 16. I have pictures of her chasing a red kickball down the street. She lived a block away from where we did then and she would race behind her red kickball in her wheelchair.

Initially, Eddie’s Wheels manufactured only two-wheeled carts, but over time they’ve developed four-wheeled carts for dogs who are quadriplegic or who have only one working leg.

The first full-quad cart that we ever built was at the behest of a woman who had a 90-pound Basset Hound who had had a devastating injury to his cervical spine. (Right.) She had gone and had the US$10,000 surgery and the dog came out of surgery with only one functional leg. (Oh, dear.) But she loved that dog, Jake, and she said, “He is not in pain and he can hold his head up and he can bark at me and boss the whole house around, and I need help; I need something better than a red wagon to give this dog a quality of life and to give me quality of life.”

So she drove out and brought him out to us. We took measurements and Eddie designed a fully supportive, quad cart for a dog that would have a headrest and a toe handle. And this was one of the first times we saw that miracle of what happens when you posture a dog (Right.) because we put him in the quad cart and all of a sudden he started reaching with one of those back legs that we thought was completely paralyzed. And at the end of a few months he was actually able to move that cart with one rear leg and one front leg.

They sent me postcards of him on the beach in the outer banks with his big Basset Hound ears flapping in the surf and this big, doggy smile on his face. He lived another two years. But it was a quality of life issue for both of them because she could put Jake in that cart, take him outside and he could walk around in the yard. All that barking had been going on because he was anxious and knew he was helpless and he calmed down and became a calmer, happier dog because she could tow him around the house and keep him in sight and he could feel like he was her companion dog again.

The first carts built by Eddie’s Wheels were for injured or paralyzed canines. But after several years, the Grinnells learned of dogs who were suffering from degenerative diseases that gradually affected their mobility and decided to help them as well.

Dogs get this disease called Degenerative Myelopathy, which is the canine version of ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). It’s a devastating, autoimmune, muscular disease. And we started collaborating to build mobility carts for these dogs. Because what would happen is that they would slowly lose their ability to walk.

And over a period of usually six to nine months they would go from hearing the toenail scraping on the sidewalk to having a dog dragging itself across the floor. And it was incredibly tragic news for me to hear because I was used to thinking I was going to create miracles for everyone; all the dogs would walk again. But this is a disease that dogs do not get better from.

So then our task became: “Well, how do we give them the best quality of life for as long as they are here and design carts that would serve their progressive needs?” So we have. And by working with dogs with DM (Degenerative Myelopathy) we have come up with a line of carts that goes from the early stages of the disease to hospice.

We can engineer a cart now that will take care of it. The dog at the beginning, when their front legs are still strong, that cart can be upgraded as the disease progresses forward and we can take weight off the front end. We can put temporary front wheels on a cart so when they cannot stand anymore they can still be stood up to eat and drink normally. (I see.) And at the very last stage of their life they can have a full quadriplegic cart.

Leslie and Eddie are the caregivers of four doggie family members, Sweet Pea, Daisy, Willa and Webster, all of whom have their own sets of wheels to keep them rolling through life. Join us again tomorrow on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants for our concluding segment on Eddie's Wheels, where we’ll meet these charming dogs, whose vibrant, joyful lives are a testimony to how Eddie’s Wheels has bettered the lives of thousands of companion animals.

For more details on Eddie’s Wheels, please visit:

Thank you for joining us today on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Coming up next is Enlightening Entertainment, after Noteworthy News, here on Supreme Master Television. May all lives be filled with everlasting freedom, peace and dignity.