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The disclosure relates to animal medical braces and more particularly pertains to a new animal medical brace for facilitating animal leg injury recovery.
The prior art relates to animal medical braces. Existing devices offer support for leg joints, such as hips and knees, particularly for the animals' back legs. The existing braces include support rods and pivot points for intentional limitation of movement, and often have an extensive strap system spanning across the animal's body. What is needed, and what the present invention provides, is a flexible wrap designed to prevent the animal from licking and irritating an injury by providing coverage, as well as a strap to hold the wrap in place and take weight off the injured leg.
An embodiment of the disclosure meets the needs presented above by generally comprising a wrap body having a wrap inner face, a wrap outer face, a wrap top edge, a wrap bottom edge, a wrap front edge, and a wrap back edge. A first wrap engagement member is coupled to the wrap inner face adjacent the wrap front edge. A pair of shoulder straps is coupled to the wrap body. Each shoulder strap has a strap proximal end coupled to the wrap outer face, a strap distal end, a strap inner side, and a strap outer side.
A second wrap engagement member is coupled to the strap proximal end of the pair of shoulder straps. The second wrap engagement member is selectively engageable with the first wrap engagement member. The first wrap engagement member and the second wrap engagement member are configured to secure the wrap body around an animal's injured leg. A pair of strap engagement members is coupled to the pair of shoulder straps. The pair of strap engagement members is coupled to the strap outer side of an inner strap of the pair of shoulder straps and to the strap inner side of an outer strap of the pair of shoulder straps. The pair of strap engagement members is selectively engageable and configured to secure the pair of shoulder straps around the animal's shoulders.
There has thus been outlined, rather broadly, the more important features of the disclosure in order that the detailed description thereof that follows may be better understood, and in order that the present contribution to the art may be better appreciated. There are additional features of the disclosure that will be described hereinafter and which will form the subject matter of the claims appended hereto.
The objects of the disclosure, along with the various features of novelty which characterize the disclosure, are pointed out with particularity in the claims annexed to and forming a part of this disclosure.
The disclosure will be better understood and objects other than those set forth above will become apparent when consideration is given to the following detailed description thereof. Such description makes reference to the annexed drawings wherein:
With reference now to the drawings, and in particular to
As best illustrated in
A first wrap engagement member 32 is coupled to the wrap inner face 14 adjacent the wrap front edge 22. The padded portion 26 and the first wrap engagement member 32 may occupy over 90% of the wrap inner face 14.
A pair of shoulder straps 34 is coupled to the wrap body 12. Each shoulder strap 34 has a strap proximal end 36 coupled to the wrap outer face 16, a strap distal end 38, a strap inner side 40, and a strap outer side 42. The strap distal end 38 of each shoulder strap may have rounded corners for improved comfort. Each of the pair of shoulder straps 34 is sufficiently elastic to allow the animal 28 to move freely and to transfer weight from the animal's injured leg 30 to a shoulders 44 of the animal.
A second wrap engagement member 46 is coupled to the strap proximal end 36 of the pair of shoulder straps. The second wrap engagement member 46 is selectively engageable with the first wrap engagement member 32. The first wrap engagement member 32 and the second wrap engagement member 46 are configured to secure the wrap body 12 around the animal's injured leg 30. The wrap body 12 may thus cover an injured, stitched, or bandaged area to prevent the animal 28 from licking it.
A pair of strap engagement members 48 is coupled to the pair of shoulder straps 34. The pair of strap engagement members 48 is coupled to the strap outer side 42 of an inner strap 50 of the pair of shoulder straps and to the strap inner side 40 of an outer strap 52 of the pair of shoulder straps. The strap engagement members 48 may be coupled adjacent the strap distal end 38 of each shoulder strap and are selectively engageable. The pair of strap engagement members 48 is configured to secure the pair of shoulder straps 34 around the animal's shoulders 44.
Each of the strap engagement members 48, the first wrap engagement member 32, and the second wrap engagement member 46 may be hook-and-loop fasteners or another selectively engageable fastener such as, but not limited to, snaps, buttons, buckles, and the like.
In use, the wrap body 12 is wrapped around the animal's injured leg 30 with the padded portion 26 covering the injured area and the first wrap engagement member 32 engaging the second wrap engagement member 46. The outer strap 52 is then passed between the animal's front legs and engaged with the inner strap 50 on the animal's shoulders 44 using the pair of strap engagement members 48. The pair of shoulder straps 34 thus secure the wrap body 12 in place and also remove weight from the injured leg 30 to increase recovery time.
With respect to the above description then, it is to be realized that the optimum dimensional relationships for the parts of an embodiment enabled by the disclosure, to include variations in size, materials, shape, form, function and manner of operation, assembly and use, are deemed readily apparent and obvious to one skilled in the art, and all equivalent relationships to those illustrated in the drawings and described in the specification are intended to be encompassed by an embodiment of the disclosure.
Therefore, the foregoing is considered as illustrative only of the principles of the disclosure. Further, since numerous modifications and changes will readily occur to those skilled in the art, it is not desired to limit the disclosure to the exact construction and operation shown and described, and accordingly, all suitable modifications and equivalents may be resorted to, falling within the scope of the disclosure. In this patent document, the word “comprising” is used in its non-limiting sense to mean that items following the word are included, but items not specifically mentioned are not excluded. A reference to an element by the indefinite article “a” does not exclude the possibility that more than one of the element is present, unless the context clearly requires that there be only one of the elements.