Kai, a neglected Golden Retriever, weighed 173 pounds and was nearly euthanized by his previous owners. They brought him to the vet to be put down since he was unable to get up due to his weight, but the vet said he still had a lot of life in him.
Thankfully, a woman named Pam stepped up to foster him and together, she and Kai proved that he does in fact have so much life left in him!
Pam says his old pictures don’t even do justice to how incredibly large Kai was. The vet said he was the fattest dog he’d ever seen and suggested he lose 100 pounds.
While that number seems overwhelmingly impossible, Kai demonstrated that nothing is impossible when you work hard.
That’s when his weight loss journey began.
Once Kai first arrived at his new foster home, it took him 20 minutes to get up three stairs into the house. Today, Kai goes up those same stairs with ease.
Before he had lost weight, Pam’s mom recalls the time she took him to the dog park.
“He’d just sit there,” she said in The Dodo’s video. “He’d watch everyone play and he’d just kind of look at me, and I’d be like, ‘Buddy, I don’t know if we’ll ever get there, but we’re gunna try.’”
First, Kai began his weight loss journey by going for daily walks. Then Pam put him on a strict diet and exercise routine. From there, he began swimming and playing fetch.
He went from only being able to walk a few steps before he had to pant and lay down, to now running around without having to catch his breath. He was now jumping over logs, climbing up onto bed, and playing with other dogs.
After all of his hard work, with help from Pam, Kai lost a whopping 100 pounds!
“He’s showing me how to remain positive and happy and take really big goals and just break them down into little tiny steps,” Pam said in The Dodo video. “Kai worked harder than any person, animal, I have ever known in my life, to get to where he could enjoy life again.”
Kai is truly an inspiration to us all!
And to put the icing on the cake, Kai officially became a foster failure and was adopted by Pam in December of 2018.
“All he wanted was to have fun and be part of a family,” Pam continued in the video. “People might have given up on him, but he never gave up on himself. By the time we were done, I just couldn’t give him up. There was no way.”
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