German Shepherd with a damaged paw pad after a vehicular trauma.The paw pads of dogs are specialized skin structures which provide cushioning, abrasion resistance, and traction. Loss of pad tissue, despite an otherwise normal limb, can result in complete loss of limb function.Cats and small dogs that live indoors and walk on soft surfaces may function well with no pads, but in this case patient was a large dog which lived outside, and therefore required reconstruction and paw salvage of the right central back leg pad.

A full thickness skin grafting is a procedure that a free piece of skin is removed from an area of the body (donor site) and is transplanted into another area (recipient site) to cover a defect. Skin grafts are often employed after serious injuries or tumour removal when some of the body's skin is damaged, especially in the distal extremities.