Monday, August 20, 2012

Make a Dog Wheelchair Yourself

Your dog was always meant to run around all happy and devil-may-care. Sometimes though, life just gets in the way in some very sad and unfortunate ways. How do you help a dog get about and be his normal self, when his hind legs are no longer able to support him? If your dog's hind legs are paralyzed or unable to function because of a ruptured disc, a spinal problem, hip displasia, a degenerative disease, or anything else, you should right away consider giving him a dog wheelchair.

Now certainly, you could buy a dog wheelchair all ready-made and ready to go. It might make you feel good doing something for your dog yourself though (and you might save some money in the process) if you were to build a dog wheelchair with your own two hands.

If the sound of a project like this seems overwhelming at first, do still give it a shot. You'll probably find out as you go along, that building something that's functional and pleasing to look at it isn't as difficult as it might at first seem.

The good news is that all of the parts that you need to make a dog wheelchair, you get to easily buy at any hardware store. But you do need to make sure that you take very careful measurements at all times. It's one of the advantages to homemade wheelchairs – they can be made to custom-fit your dog.

The first thing that you need to do is to measure your dog from his shoulder to his rear, and you need measurements for how wide he is at the widest part (usually, this is around the chest).

With these measurements in hand, you should be able to work out how long a device you need to build. If your dog is rather small, plastic or PVC should be the material you choose. If your dog is large and heavy, a dog wheelchair made of metal would be ideal.

The idea, basically, is to place your dog in a harness. You need to create a harness by placing two poles along each side of your dog. You are to connect them together at the front so that the device can rest on your dog's neck.

At the rear, the poles needs to be connected to a set of wheels, and they need to go under your dog and provide support.

You just need to make sure that where the rear part of your dog's body rests on the carriage, that the material there is supportive enough that it doesn't hurt your dog.

Dog Wheelchairs at Amazon










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