A northshore dog has made a remarkable recovery after a horrific incident last February. Sadie, was burned from nose to tail, but is now healed all thanks to a historic procedure. Eyewitness News spoke with her vet, who helped give her a second shot at life.
*Warning parts of the video above may be graphic for some.
If you ask Dr. Dena Lodato about Sadie, she'll say she's a miracle.
"For a dog that has burns to more than 70 percent of her body, what is the survival rate for that?" we asked.
"I've never seen one survive," Dr. Lodato said.
Sadie came to Lodato at Resurgence Vet Clinic in February as an owner surrender. She had suffered horrific burns five days earlier when a heat lamp attached to her kennel caught fire.
'The fact she came five days after and she was wagging her tail and eating and interacting with people, she was still, she was fighting, she hadn't given up," said Dr. Lodato.
Neither did Lodato. Staff began hyperbaric treatments to get oxygen to Sadie's skin tissue. Her likelihood of survival though drastically improved thanks to LSU Health Doctors at the UMC Burn Center. They did something that had never been done on a dog before, something called 'Recell.'
"So with the Recell what she did is take a little strip of skin, and you put it in this kit," described Dr. Lodato. "And what this kit does, is enzymatically digests it to where it extracts the stem cell from this piece of skin."
The stem cells are turned into a liquid and sprayed over the burns to hopefully grow new skin. Lodato says results were seen days later.
"Probably maybe a week or so you could see little islands start developing and you just watched them expand," said Dr. Lodato. "It was the coolest thing to watch, the whole process from the very beginning to all of a sudden oh there's skin there that wasn't before."
Now nine months later, Sadie is fully recovered, living her best life.
"She has no ill will towards anybody, everybody is her friend," said Dr. Lodato.
Including Lodato, who after the procedure decided to adopt her.
"Probably during one of the first bandage changes during 'Recell' treatment, she looked at me, walked right over and laid down in my lap and I was like, oh I'm in trouble," she remembers.
The journey has been life-changing for Sadie and eye-opening for Lodato, who says this four-legged wonder is proof, amazing things can happen.