STERLING, Va. – For 17 years Derrick Campana has been gifting the disabled with a new lease on life with braces, prosthetics and engineered equipment. But Campana’s clients have four legs, not two. And he never planned it that way.
Armed with a master’s degree in prosthetics and orthotics, Campana was perfectly happy serving his two-legged clientele. But one day a veterinarian walked into his clinic with black lab named Charlie. Charlie suffered from a congenital deformity to his front leg.
“She said, ‘My dog needs a prosthesis.’ And I kind of looked at her weird because I never saw a dog with a prosthesis,” he says.
“I had never heard of animal prosthetics. And I fit that dog, and I got such joy and fulfillment out of it, I started a company right away. That was about 17 years ago, and I've helped almost 30,000 patients to this point regain their mobility,” he says.
Charlie may have started it, but Campana is nonpartisan in his ministrations. “One day I’ll have an eagle leg or an owl or an elephant leg on my desk and the next day it’s a couple of dogs and a goat and a llama or a deer,” he says.
His most challenging job was building a custom wheelchair for a tortoise, he chuckles. “That was really fun. And I’ve done talons for eagles, owl legs, a leg for a crane, an elephant leg. I’m making four elephant legs in Thailand this summer.”
Viewers can watch this modern-day Hippocrates and his unpredictable patients on the TV series, “The Wizard of Paws,” now airing on BYU TV.
Campana travels the world fitting apparatuses for impaired animals. His company, Bionic Pets, manufactures a variety of mobility equipment. The website is www.bionicpets.org.
“The majority of the cases I treat I never see,” he says. “So we send out these Fiberglas casting kits all over the world and a lot of times the animal owner or veterinarian makes a cast of the animal, and it’s the first time they’ve made a cast, and a lot of time we get not the best cast,” he smiles.
“And we have to take this mold and turn it into something that’s going to help the animal. . . Doing it by mail and helping animals in that way can be really, really difficult -- that’s why there are so few of us who do that.”
Prosthetics refers to limb replacements, he explains; orthotics are braces. Campana often treks cross-country with what he calls his “mobile limb lab.” “I go right to the family, right to the people, I cast it, build the device, and fit the animal right there. That’s the way it should be. It’s a better way to do it.”
He was always artistic as a child. Campana says: “When I was a kid I was sculpting every day with plaster and things like that. I did go to medical school and learned a lot about human prosthetics, but I was self-taught in how to do veterinary prosthetics because there was no textbook showing how to do those things.”
Not exactly an art and not exactly a science, Campana says, “There’s a lot to it. You kind have to have the left-hand-right-brain kind of thing because it takes a specific skill set. But I love it. I'm left-handed so I think I have that kind of thing going on,” he laughs.
Many of his patients are dogs and the common problem with them, he says, are their ACLs, their knees. “These surgeries cost around 5 grand and what people don’t realize is that if you put a knee brace on a dog, after about six months a lot of times, the knee will heal, and you can avoid surgery all together. So we’re saving people thousands of dollars and helping their dog.”
The cost of braces runs around $700, says Campana. “And most of our prosthetics are around $1,100 so it’s one of the misconceptions out there that these things are so expensive that you have to be rich to do this for your animal, when actually it’s quite the opposite. We’re saving thousands of dollars by avoiding surgery and helping the animal to have a longer and healthier life because we can extend their lives by a couple years,” he says.
BYU TV discovered Campana when he appeared on the first episode of “Dodo Heroes,” which aired on Animal Planet and is streaming now on discovery+. In that segment, he replaced all four legs on a dog named Chi-Chi. “Such a sad story,” he sighs, “she was the victim of the meat-trade industry in China. Luckily someone adopted her and brought her over here, and I got her all fixed up.”
Though it has been difficult for Campana and his company to survive the COVID onslaught, he says, “I’m living my dream now. I pinch myself every day doing this job – using my hands helping animals, helping animals and families get whole again. You can’t get much better than that.”
‘QUEST’ ESCAPES THE PANDEMIC
The workplace comedy “Mythic Quest” will be back for its second season Friday on Apple+. And while it’s a comedy, filming this season was no laughing matter says Rob McElhenney, one of the show’s creators, producers, and stars.
“When we decided to make that decision to come back, we hired a third party, a team of scientists and doctors and epidemiologists to make sure that we were going to be as safe as we could possibly be, which meant testing as many times as five times a week,” he says.
“And then beyond that, we had all this incredibly protective PPE (personal protective equipment) whether it’s the mask and the face shields, which we had on set, social distancing as much as we could. Certainly when we were in the cafeteria or eating, things like that, we literally had things outfitted that people were eating essentially in phone booths outside.
“That being said, we knew that nothing is a 100% safe. . . It becomes difficult because we are social animals and because we have a way that we're used to working. And that people fall back into those – ways regardless of how many times they're reminded or we're all reminded – that we need to keep our face shields down as well the masks. And please stay six feet apart from each other. It’s 200 people working together in these sound stages and it’s really, really difficult,” he says.
“I think we only had one or two positive cases and they were immediately, immediately sequestered and sent home. Luckily, everybody was fine and was able to return to work.”
‘DONKEY’ RETURNS TO THE ‘HOOD
Public Television’s adored “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” lives on in a new puppet show for PBS KIDS featuring a character from the good old days. “Donkey Hodie,” premiering this week, is the granddaughter of the one that reigned in the old neighborhood and stars Haley Jenkins as the curious Donkey.
“As a puppeteer, I'm so happy that the show is done with puppets, of course, because I love puppeteering,” she says.
“But, also, if you think about what are all of the children’s shows or characters that you really feel nostalgic for, when you really come down to it, so many of them are puppets. Because as a viewer, you realize that that character actually exists. It's real. It's not an animated character that you can't actually hug in real life,” says Jenkins.
“Somebody could meet, potentially, Purple Panda or Donkey or Bob Dog. (All characters from the show). Pat Bob Dog on the head. That's a real thing, and kids really relate to that. The same with (the Shari Lewis puppet) Lambchop. . . That was such a wonderful show, and so much of that little lamb is real. So personally I think that that's a big reason why the puppetry is so important with children’s television.”
FILM FESTIVAL CELEBRATES THE CLASSICS[
The Turner Classic Movie Film Festival is seeking cover this year and will be “virtual” like everything else. Known for perpetuating the true art of classic cinema, the Festival runs Thursday through Sunday and offers some of best of the breed on TCM and HBO Max.
The celebration kicks off with the 60th anniversary of “West Side Story” at 8 p.m. (ET) and will feature a chatty reunion with three performers from that innovative musical: Rita Moreno, Russ Tamblyn and George Chakiris.
That classic is sure to stir anticipation for Steven Spielberg’s new version which is due Dec. 10. From clips seen so far, it looks like another masterpiece from Spielberg.
During the festival, TCM will deliver at 4 p.m. (ET) Friday Sophia Loren talking in 2015 about her career. And at 8 p.m. SF Sketchfest will attempt some rationality with a table-read of “Plan 9 from Outer Space.”
Seated at the table will be folk like Bob Odenkirk, Maria Bamford, Oscar Nunez and Laraine Newman. And at 9:30 the REAL “Plan 9 from Outer Space” makes a crash landing. The 1959 classic is considered one of the worst movies ever made. Good for a jelly-belly laugh.
HBO Max will be featuring an array of specials including master directors like Barry Levinson, Mira Nair and Rob Reiner introducing their evergreens. Julianne Moore will talk about Myrna Loy, Michael Caine waxes poetic on Cary Grant, and Bruce Springsteen discusses John Ford’s timeless western, “The Searchers.”
____
