Bob, a hound mix, crosses his paws — one a chocolate brown foot of fur, the other a homemade socket prosthetic made of fiberglass, resin and a dollar store bouncy ball. The makeshift front leg has helped the former shelter dog since 2013, when he wobbled his way into Niki Marie Hansen’s life.
After the rescue, one of Hansen’s friends asked for her assistance in securing an amputation and crafting a fitted socket prosthetic. The friend ran an animal shelter.
Hansen, a graduate student, focuses much of her research on implanted prosthetics for horses, but she has also engineered traditional socket prosthetics for dogs, goats and a cow.
Though she previously shuffled between jobs in car sales, retail management and shipping industries, Hansen said she found her passion in helping animals. Holding undergraduate degrees in both music and molecular biology, it took her a while to marry work and pleasure.
“Life throws some curve balls at you and you have to either figure out how to duck or swing and pray that you hit it,” she said. “I swung and I hit it.”
Hansen’s interest in veterinary prosthetics began at an early age, when her pet horse’s front leg went lame. Confronted with the decision to either euthanize or try a risky surgery, Hansen clung to hope and opted for the surgery.
In a twist of fate, the surgery proved successful.
Despite the happy ending, Hansen said as a child she wondered why her horse “couldn’t have a fake leg like some people [did].” From that point forward, she said she cultivated an interest in helping disabled animals regain mobility.
Her first patient was a friend’s goat named Padmé who was missing a back leg. Hansen worked with a group from Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics, where she was completing her clinical hours, to design a custom fabricated leg for the goat in 2012.
However, Hansen’s graduate studies prove more complex than mechanical socket donations to friends.
Implanted prosthetics go into a bone’s marrow cavity and “clip” to the residual limb rather than going over the skin like socket prosthetics, she said. With implanted prosthetics, Hansen said there are no sores or bruises as are common with their socket counterparts.
Her research seeks to solve the issue of infections, the main visible problem with implanted prosthetics.
She said she was the first person at the University to use crowd funding for research money. After raising more than $10,000, she used the funds to design and create custom pieces.
When she is not in the lab, preparing for her dissertation or making prosthetics for friends’ pets, Hansen also runs a babysitting and nanny agency. She said she works roughly 110 hours per week.
Though high on stress and low on funds, Hansen said she charges “peanuts” for socket prosthetics like Bob’s and Padmé’s because the time patients spend waiting for the piece is payment enough. Because each piece is custom-fit, she said each case works more like a donation than marketplace activity.
“It’s not like something you take off a shelf and sell,” she said.
In the future, Hansen said she hopes to write two textbooks — one catered toward veterinarians and the other toward prosthetics professionals. She also said she would like to start a research and development company dedicated to bringing implanted prosthetics to market in the United States.
For now, Hansen said her primary focus is on her research and Bob, who sleeps with her every night. She said he is enjoying his new foot.
“He rolls on it,” Hansen said. “He doesn’t wear it all the time because he’s lazy.”

Gallery • 2 Photos

Catherine Seddon

Bob shows off his prosthetic paw Monday, Jan. 25, 2016 at the LSU Student Incubator.