Grace was done with the stretcher.
For nearly three weeks, the 14-year-old Lab-Husky mix had been carried outside from Very Important Paws in West Palm Beach, where owner Will Corrente had essentially moved in with her. Slings helped support her. Treatments came four or five times a week.
Then one afternoon, Corrente told Grace it was time to get back onto the stretcher.
She refused.
Instead, she stood up and walked toward the steps leading to his office.
“It was kind of like, ‘You're not getting rid of me, and I’m tired of being an invalid,’” Corrente recalls.
Less than three weeks earlier, he had wondered whether he would lose her.
Grace had been struck by a car while crossing Sapodilla Avenue. Corrente, distracted by a phone call, realized too late that she had turned back toward the other side of the street.
“I saw the car coming,” he says. “I ran out and tried to yell.”
Initial X-rays appeared to show multiple pelvic fractures, along with a possible nerve injury affecting her left shoulder. Grace could not walk, and Corrente was told to give her medication and wait several weeks to see whether she improved.
His response was simple.
“Yeah, I’m not doing that.”
A friend connected him with a veterinarian in Wellington experienced in rehabilitative and complementary treatments. Corrente arrived frightened enough to ask the question every pet owner dreads.
“Do I need to let her go?”
The answer: no.
Grace began an intensive regimen that included acupuncture, electroacupuncture, shockwave treatments, magnetic therapy, herbal medicine and rest.
About two and a half weeks later came the day she rejected the stretcher and walked.
A surgeon later determined that Grace’s apparent pelvic fractures were actually shadows created by her anatomy. Corrente jokes that her longtime nickname, “Chunky,” may have worked in her favor, with the extra padding helping cushion the impact.
“For all the naysayers who said, ‘Your dog’s too fat,’ she had plenty of cushion,” he says.
Grace has since lost about 12 pounds.
Her story with Corrente began long before the accident. He adopted her from Big Dog Ranch Rescue in 2018, when she was about six years old. He had gone intending to adopt a black Lab puppy, but by the time he arrived, the puppies were gone.
So he asked for a good older dog who needed a home.
They brought out Patty.
A few minutes later, he had his dog.
She became Grace, named for God’s grace and for the sweet disposition that reminded Corrente of Coco, the beloved black Lab he had recently lost.
The X-rays taken after Grace’s accident also revealed something Corrente had never known: small BB-like pellets inside her stomach, suggesting she may have been shot before she was rescued.
“And she is just the sweetest dog you would ever meet in your life,” he says.
Her resilience made the recovery even more meaningful—and changed how Corrente thought about canine care.
Corrente founded Very Important Paws in 2004 after leaving Wall Street, moving to Florida and volunteering with shelter dogs. Driving past The Breakers one evening, an idea struck him.
“Wouldn’t it be funny to have a dog hotel?”
More than two decades later, Grace has helped broaden that vision.
Corrente had already been exploring canine nutrition, supplementation and wellness, but her accident introduced him to new rehabilitation techniques. He now hopes to make acupuncture, electroacupuncture, shockwave and magnetic therapies available through VIP by appointment.
The larger lesson, he says, is not to dismiss conventional veterinary medicine, but to keep asking questions.
“Don’t take the first diagnosis as the only diagnosis,” Corrente says. “Do some additional research.”
For Corrente, that lesson has a name.
Grace.