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Students to Design Prosthetic Paw for Puppy

Tuesday, December 6, 2022

This story by Alex Rodriguez of The Journal Times originally appeared on October 21, 2022. “Real world problems are what we’re trying to solve,” says Dan Buchholz, engineering teacher at Case High School. “[The students] get to use their passion for engineering and partner with biomedical students who are the same age.”

Case High students have an important assignment: Making a fourth paw for a puppy named Forrest Stump

Puppy
Forrest Stump receives
treats as a reward for
getting his leg scanned.

MOUNT PLEASANT — Forrest Stump is like a lot of other puppies. He likes treats. He doesn’t like to sit still. He falls down a lot. Perhaps more than other dogs. He only has three paws.

Seniors in the engineering and biomedical classes at Case High School were visited by the young dog Wednesday morning, and they might just hold the key to protect him from the upcoming Midwestern winter.

Forrest Stump is a 4-month-old dog who was found underneath a camper in Texas. He was a part of a litter of seven, only three of whom survived. His mother, who could not be sent to Wisconsin with her pups because of heartworms, is a senior dog, estimated to be 13 years old at the time of her litter’s birth. Likely due to complications from his birth, Forrest is missing a paw on his rear right leg.

Forrest was rescued by Texas Rescue Riders, an organization that brings around 50 stray dogs and about 18 cats a month from Texas to southeastern Wisconsin where they can be placed in loving homes.

Forrest’s current foster home is with Jessica Lietzke, adoption and foster coordinator for Texas Rescue Riders. Lietzke had told Diane Knoll, purchasing manager for Racine Unified, about Forrest and she contacted Sara Gauthier and Dan Buchholz, biomed and engineering teachers for Case about the opportunity to have the kids help Forrest out.

Taking measurements
Makayla Guyton, Kylee Coca
and Laura Cornett work
together to measure Forrest
Stump's back-right leg,
which is missing a paw.

Taking measurementsForrest didn’t mind the students touching his stump. “You will feel that the bones and the nerve endings are right there,” Lietzke told the students Wednesday. “We think he will hate the snow on it because he hates the rain.”

On a day-to-day basis, Forrest tends to “just faceplant,” Lietzke said. The puppy likes running on slick surfaces and “he forgets that he doesn’t have any grip on that leg. He uses it, but he doesn’t know that he doesn’t have any grip.”

Lietzke went on to tell the class that Forrest has trouble climbing onto furniture, trying to use what is left on his hind paw as support but never quite making it. The end of the paw has a callus to it as well. One of the main problems with Forrest is that his paw is not only vulnerable to infection but hyper-sensitive to cold, causing the pooch discomfort even with just the morning dew.

“He’s a puppy. He moves a lot,” said Amanda Gapinski, a Case senior in the engineering class, as she used a 3D scanner to get a rendering of Forrest’s missing paw.

Taking a pawprint
Forrest gets his paws and his
"stump" inked by engineering
students at Case Wednesday.
The prints will help the
students take measure-
ments for the prosthetics.

The scanner she tried to use on Forrest would take rapid pictures of his paw, creating a 3D scan with a full 360-degree view of the object. With the scanned image, students can use rendering programs to better create models of possible prosthetics. Gapinski is a part of the highest engineering class at Case, a senior-level class that uses everything the students have learned in the last three years to help the community.

“It’s harder to get a moving object, especially with a puppy,” Gapinski said. “Just doing the measurements right now might be the best idea, but the 3D is still worth a shot, and this is still one of our first uses of it. Later on in the future, if he ever comes back, we might have a better hold on how to use it.”

While the designing of the prosthetic is more up to the bio-med students, Gapinski suggested having a sock-like component to the prosthetic that could keep Forrest warm during his first winter.

The two teams of students will work together to develop an artificial paw for Forrest, using skills they have learned in their respective classes. Groups of four will use the measurements and data collected from meeting Forrest Wednesday to come up with concepts for an artificial paw for the pup.

One group of biomed students — Carlos Cervantes, Milos Miletic, Bradley Morrison and Jillian Stollenwerk — drew up a concept that would use a rubber or plastic, Lego-like system of blocks that could adapt to his height when he ages. It would also include a loop around Forrest’s body to keep it in place.

Noah Ferguson, left, and Cameron Werner hold up a 3D rendering of Forrest Stump's missing paw Wednesday.
Noah Ferguson, left, and
Cameron Werner hold up a 3D
rendering of Forrest Stump's
missing paw Wednesday.

“We plan on 3D printing (the pieces),” Miletic explained. ”We just need to find first how long his leg is around, and also the size of his body.”

The students will meet virtually with a veterinarian on Oct. 24 to evaluate how the prosthetic concepts would work in a practical sense, with the dog’s lifestyle in mind as well as how the prosthetic can grow with him.

If the students cannot figure out a practical prosthetic for Forrest, his leg will have to be amputated, which adds real stakes for both them and Forrest.

“It’s a big project to take on, especially (since there is) the chance that if it doesn’t work his leg might need to be amputated,” said Gauthier. ”There’s that pressure and knowing that it has lasting effects, but at the same time we’re very excited.”

For their junior year, the biomed students built building prosthetic arms as a project, but there was not a real-world impact. As seniors, they need to combine those lessons learned into something that can actually matter outside the classroom.

“For them to (use) those same skills (in) a real-world project makes it much more rewarding,” Gauthier said.

In about two weeks, Forrest will return to the class for a fitting of the different prosthetic prototypes. Working with his family, the best ideas among all projects will be implemented, with the hope that Forrest will have a new, functional prosthetic by the end of November. As he grows, Forrest will be brought in for follow-ups to see what improvements can be made.

Building prosthetics for Forrest counts as these students’ capstone project, a requirement to graduate from the Academies of Racine, the job-focused and college-focused philosophy in place at Case as well as Horlick and Park high schools.

“I think the kids are very nervous about being successful,” Gauthier said. “It has a lot more meaning to them, being that it is a real dog, there are real consequences. It’s just not a project they are doing for school ... (This) makes them work a lot harder and come up with more creative ideas than if it was just an assignment that I gave them.”

In the meantime, Forrest already has a new family lined up for him. Jamie Sershon, Knoll’s daughter, will be adopting him. They hope he will be ready to have a happy Thanksgiving with a new family, and a leg up in the world.

—reprinted with permission from The Journal Times, Racine, Wisconsin.