Most dogs her age are slowing down — but not Amira.
The 13-year-old senior street dog was rescued from Thailand after surviving a shooting that nearly ended her life.
Rescued after a decade on the streets
Her owner in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Lara Pleasence, first discovered her online.
“I was just scrolling on Instagram,” Pleasence said. “I follow a lot of rescues and I was on the Soi Dog Foundation Instagram page and I saw this dog that they had just found. She had been shot in the head over her left eye. She had about a thumb-sized hole over her left eye and she had only two legs, and they said that she was a senior dog who had lived life as a two-legged dog for almost 10 years and then someone had shot her in the head.”
Pleasence said the dog’s spirit stopped her in her tracks.
“Her tail was still wagging and that was it for me. I was just — it just crushed me that this dog could still trust humans.”
She told her husband she needed to adopt the dog.
“I said this is bigger than me. I have to do something. I need to reach out to them … I couldn’t risk that she would remain in the shelter without a home or that someone would adopt her and not give her the life that she clearly deserved.”
The long journey home
Amira needed nearly six months of medical care before she was healthy enough to travel.
“They didn’t think she would ever be healthy enough to fly because of her liver and kidneys from eating garbage for so many years,” Pleasence said.
When she finally arrived after a 22-hour trip from Bangkok to Montreal, she acted as though she already belonged.
“She jumped out of that crate like she’d known us forever,” Pleasence said. “It was like a homecoming.”
Amira, a 13-year-old former stray dog from Thailand who survived a gunshot wound, rests on the couch at her home in Vaudreuil-Dorion on Nov. 27, 2025. (Adriana Gentile, CityNews)
By the next morning, the senior dog had already climbed 14 stairs on her own to nap upstairs.
“She just breaks barriers everywhere she goes.
“They call them street dogs but they’re not — they’re just homeless dogs … she’s the most loving, most sweet dog. She wants to be with us all the time. She goes on the boat with us, she goes kayaking and canoeing with us and she loves it. She just loves being a part of a family.”
The fight for mobility
Amira arrived with a wheelchair, but it limited her ability to explore the world the way she was used to.
“She just desperately wanted to get up onto the grass and smell all the smells,” Pleasence said. “She couldn’t get her head down in the wheelchair so it was killing me.”
Specialists told the family that prosthetics were impossible.
“Every time we sent in an X-ray to a company they said, ‘no, no, her little nubs are way too short … plus your dog’s 11 years old — there is no way she’s gonna learn how to walk in prosthetic legs.”
But Pleasence refused to give up.
“I was like, ‘well you don’t know this dog.’”
Eventually, a New Jersey company, 3D Pets, agreed to try custom 3D-printed prosthetics.
“We started off low, with a strap system, it was never been done before… across her chest and a strap across her back and that’s how they stayed on and it worked and I’d use lots of cookies, lots of love, lots of patience, and slowly she just just started to learn them.”
Amira, a 13-year-old senior dog rescued from Thailand, rests on the couch wearing her custom 3D-printed prosthetic legs at her home in Vaudreuil-Dorion on Nov. 27, 2025. (Adriana Gentile, CityNews)
From there, the prosthetics were gradually adjusted.
“She is just out there every day loving her legs because she can go faster, she can go further than ever.”
Amira now refuses to go outside without them.
“She’s obsessed with her legs, she will cry for her legs … now she she won’t even walk without them, whereas she used to take off and go wandering around like she used to on the streets, and now, nope, she wants to wait until I put her legs on and she’ll cry until I do,” Pleasence said.
A survivor in every sense
Pleasence still marvels at everything Amira endured and overcame.
“Nobody knows how she survived the first 10 years on the streets,” she said. “She had litter after litter and had to not only take care of herself but also her puppies and then to survive a gunshot wound — like it just boggles your mind.”
Amira, 13-year-old rescue dog from Thailand now living in Vaudreuil-Dorion on Nov. 27, 2025. (Julissa Hurtado, CityNews).
“You can teach an old dog new tricks, she is the proof. She’s just amazing, and everything she does just surprises us and makes us realize that if you leave your past behind and just live in the present with her, there’s so much good. There’s so much good and she’s all about it.”
An unexpected social-media star
Amira now has more than 175,000 followers cheering her on.
Pleasence said she originally shared updates simply to reassure people who had followed the rescue story online.
“I put up a page just because I wanted everybody to know that she’s OK, and she’s doing great. And she just started inspiring people and her the numbers started growing and growing and everyone was like, ‘oh my God, she’s such a warrior.’ Ad she just shows you, even on your worst day, that you can find happiness, and just letting go of your past and and just the resilience of a dog is just incredible … it really is.”
Amira, 13-year-old rescue dog from Thailand on a walk with her prosthetic legs in Vaudreuil-Dorion on Nov. 27, 2025. (Julissa Hurtado/CityNews).
Opening their home to more disabled dogs
Amira was the family’s first disabled dog — but not their last.
“After I saw that this disability is almost like a superpower, it was like I only wanted to adopt disabled dogs,” Pleasence said.
Since then, the family has adopted a dog from India with permanently deformed legs and a chihuahua puppy rescued from a dumpster in Arizona who was born without front legs.
Lara Pleasence, Amira’s owner, is pictured in Vaudreuil-Dorion with her dogs, on Nov. 27, 2025. (Julissa Hurtado, CityNews)
With every newcomer, Amira leads the way.
“She just helps them adapt so quickly,” Pleasence said. “She shows them that it’s safe here … that fun is on the agenda.”
Pleasence said one philosophy guides her.
“They always say helping one dog won’t change the world, but it will change the world for this one dog and that’s how I felt. I felt that we were going to make a difference to her … it became my priority every day to just do whatever I could to give her the life that she had deserved long before the 10 years that she had spent on the street, and she just deserved it.”
What comes next
When asked if more dogs may be in their future, Pleasence laughed. “Where is my husband?” she joked.
“I definitely would like to keep adopting … if we can help, we want to help,” she said. “There are so many in need.”
