Rocky: Doctors ask this therapy dog to come to the hospital to help support patients in need because she was voted the happiest dog on earth. This hospital is in Las Vegas. This was shortly after the Las Vegas shooting. Believe it or not, Scooty does this all the time.
Erica: When we go into these hospital settings, that light switch goes on for her. And she’s like, I’m here for other people. She’s like, what can I do to make you feel better? You’re gonna sit down on your lap. Can you kisses?
Rocky: This dog’s happiness and joy even helped the doctors and nurses, which at the time meant so much to these healthcare heroes.
Erica: I think she picks up on the heaviness of the situation. You could tell. She just don’t cry. Like I’m here. Like touch me. Like aren’t I happy like giving kisses to a doctor’s face rolling over showing her belly. I didn’t even think of that when I came in until a doctor was practically in tears when she was on scooty. So that was really nice.
Rocky: Even though she’s the happiest dog on earth, you’d be surprised where she started as a stray in Mexico with little to no hope left.
Erica: I found myself on a local rescue dog organization’s webpage, and they had just found dogs from hoarding situation. And Scooty was one of their main dogs that they had been talking about because she had been hit by a car and left for dead. She obviously couldn’t walk, but she also had dragged her back body around, down to the bones of some, the places on her back legs, incredibly bad infections and maggots and gangrene setting into her legs. She had literally every issue you could think of, um, working against her
Rocky: Erica arranged to pick up Scootie from the rescue from Mexico and did everything she could to help her.
Erica: Nothing was linear with caring for special needs dogs. There’s a lot of learning as you go. It was a lot of trial by fire. Getting her wheelchair was obviously the biggest goal that we had is to get her into some sort of mobility working on standing, working on reflexes. We put her into water therapy, hydrotherapy.
We tried acupuncture. We tried laser treatment, no holds bar. Like we went all in for it. I would say like a few weeks of her realizing this is home and this is the person that’s caring for me. She started opening up. It really took, I think, five months. It took us to get into a routine and to see improvement of her. She started like stand on her own and take a few steps.
Once we were able to take her to the beach and let her walk around freely, cuz the sand, she could fall and scrape and scoop and it won’t hurt her. So getting her to the beach and seeing her play with other dogs, stand up on her own and go right into the waves in her wheelchair. Like it was like at like it was nothing. She just would just go straight into the water with her wheelchair. It was really great. The beach is definitely her zone.
Rocky: Scooty now has admires around the world saying how much her happy personality inspires them.
Erica: She is just a bundle of joy and it hasn’t been the over the past few years and she just offers pure joy and happiness. She makes different beautiful. She makes people understand that just because you are different or differently abled, it doesn’t mean you have to have a negative outlook on life.
I can’t tell you how many people we’ve met, who have other special needs dogs because of Scooty. And then we have met in person and then we’ll hang out and our dogs next to me and then we have friends for life and it’s, it’s just been really amazing.
She’s taught me so much empathy and patience, just a really positive outlook. She makes me smile so many times a day with so how goofy she is and so happy and to be able to share that and enough to be translated across the screen and other people can also see that that’s incredible
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