Chocolate the dog may be on injured reserve until further notice, but his star status hasn't diminished.
The locally famous Chesapeake Bay retriever likely will need eight to 12 more weeks of physical therapy to recover from his two broken front legs, before he's strong and mobile enough to be ready for adoption.
The College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University in Pullman initially predicted a six-week post-operative rehab period. But the rate of his progress now means he likely will be released in late May or early June.
Technicians and students at the veterinary school continue to work with Chocolate daily, putting him on an underwater treadmill, moving his limbs through passive range of motion exercises and walking him with the help of a harness and a mobile lift. A high-protein kibble diet also is intended to help him recover his strength.
Although he is expected to continue to improve, the doctors and technicians don't expect him to completely regain normal abilities. "We're trying to get him to a place where he can walk comfortably and use his legs comfortably," said Darin Watkins, spokesman for the veterinary school. "He'll never be a performance athlete, let's just say."
Chocolate has come a long way after being rescued from rural Franklin County in late January with two severely broken front legs. The woman who picked him up from a field said she had seen him on the broken legs, neglected since the summer.
Much of his history before his rescue is speculation. The most embraced theory was that he was dumped and then got hit by a car, snapping his two front legs.
He apparently then floundered on his own in the fields, shifting his weight from his front legs onto his back legs to walk. And it was out there that he probably picked up the squishy yellow ball that he's kept as his companion throughout his journey.
But Dr. Steve Martinez, the orthopedic surgeon in charge of Chocolate's treatment at WSU, said there are many questions about how the accident happened and how the dog survived.
He could've been hurt while he was still in somebody's care or after he was dumped, Martinez said. He may have been hit by a car, or he may have jumped from a moving pickup. He even could have gotten caught in a drainage ditch, Martinez said.
Martinez also believes Chocolate had some help before he was rescued.
"It makes sense that he probably was being cared (for) by somebody in some capacity. Otherwise I wouldn't imagine he would've survived," Martinez said. "He might've starved to death, been eaten by somebody else, or died of infections or other complications of the fractures."
But as much uncertainty as there is about Chocolate's past, since the Herald first reported his situation Feb. 5, his journey has been well-documented.
A donation paid for his initial treatment at Meadow Hills Veterinary Center in Kennewick, and then he was taken to WSU in Pullman where donations also will pay for his surgeries and physical therapy.
The websites of the Herald, Meadow Hills and WSU's veterinary school -- www.tricity herald.com, www.mhvc.net and www.vetmed.wsu.edu -- all have reported increased traffic from the Chocolate saga.
When WSU posted video of Chocolate using the underwater treadmill, its website received 6,000 hits over the next five days, Watkins said. He did not have numbers on how many page views Chocolate's story has received overall.
WSU also has posted periodic updates about Chocolate's progress as a practical way to accommodate the requests for information the school was getting.
"This was the result of the sheer volume of phone calls and e-mails we were getting," Watkins said. "In the first few days, I couldn't even set my phone down before somebody else was calling."
The veterinary school also provides online reports about other patients at its hospital, and some of them -- such as a beaver that lost its two front teeth and was featured on the front page of a Shanghai newspaper -- have gotten a fair amount of attention over the years.
But in the four years Watkins has been at the school, Chocolate's story has been the biggest, he said.
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