Roscoe is Rolling Again!

Roscoe test drives his new wheelchair.

As I mentioned the other day, a disabled Pug named Roscoe had his wheelchair stolen from outside his McCowan Avenue home in central Toronto. Without Roscoe’s wheelchair, his owner, Christine Borsuk, was unable to give Roscoe the daily walks he so looked forward to.

Thanks to a generous donation of a new wheelchair from a fellow Pug owner, Roscoe is now rolling again!

From the Toronto Star –

Tanya Jones, one of three people who offered Roscoe a replacement, showed up at his McCowan Rd. Thursday with a tiny wheelchair that her own dog used until it died a few years ago.

Roscoe’s custom-made wheelchair was stolen recently, leaving him no way to exercise, other than a clumsy sling that his owner, Christine Borsuk, uses to hold up his rear end while he hobbles on his front legs.

“It broke my heart,” said Jones, a veterinary technician at the West Hill Animal Clinic, on Lawrence Ave. E. “We had one in our garage that we weren’t using, so I wanted to get it to him.”

The 5-year-old pug’s mobility has steadily deteriorated since he was a pup, due to a kink in his spine that caused nerve damage and paralyzed his hind legs.

Roscoe seemed to know what he was looking at when Jones took the chair out of her vehicle. He sniffed it and got excited, dragging his immobile hindquarters around the laneway until Borsuk started worrying about abrasions.

She was overwhelmed by offers of donations from hundreds of Star readers who learned in the Thursday Fixer column that Roscoe’s chair had been stolen. “It’s just incredible,” she said. “It absolutely redeems my faith in human nature.”

With some fiddling and adjusting of straps, the chair seemed to fit reasonably well, allowing Roscoe to happily trot along the sidewalk in front of his home.

After the column was posted Wednesday on thestar.com, it prompted a huge outpouring of generosity, with readers as far as California, Florida, North Carolina and western Canada offering cash to buy him another.

That just restores your faith in humanity, doesn’t it? And, as someone said on Facebook, “Dog people really are the best people!”.