When Mosha the elephant was two years old, she suffered a horrific injury: The poor creature stepped on a land mine at the Thai-Burmese border. This part of the world is actually rife with land mines, a result of decades of political unrest and guerrilla warfare in the region. Unfortunately, it’s not just humans who get caught up in land mine related violence: Mosha lost her leg to the accident, and could have lost the chance to have a normal life. After two years of living with her injury and disability, Mosha met a doctor who would change everything. His name is Dr. Therdchai Jivacate, and he’s a surgeon, inventor, and prosthetics expert who made it his mission to help Mosha out.
“When I saw Mosha, I noticed that she had to keep raising her trunk into the air in order to walk properly,” Jivacate said in an interview, further explaining that the she subsequently had to put most of her 1,300 pounds onto just her one front leg. What he decided to do next was innovative, risky, and had never been done before — and once you see what the good doctor did for Mosha, you’re going to be holding back a few tears. See the rest of the story in the video below.