Love of My Life -- Another Ellie Update!!

We've got fur!!



After one month in foster and five weeks of treatment, we have new fur growing in!! Hooray!

The best part? Ellie is now starting to act like the puppy she never got to be. She gallops around, saying hi to everyone: people, dogs, cats, the wet floor sign--doesn't matter! She loves you!
The other good sign is that her entropion no longer appears as severe as we thought. She's able to open her eyes and doesn't seem to have much drainage.



We have her set up for a spay and possible eye surgery next week, so we have our fingers crossed. If she keeps improving at this rate, she should be done with treatment within another month!



(Don't you love this one? Looks like a mugshot! Too funny.)

Love of My Life

We have an ongoing joke at work when a new animal comes in that it's the new "love of my (your, her) life." There is usually about one per week and it's almost always some pathetic animal that needs a lot of work before they are cute and/or adoptable.

Which leads me to Ellie--the love of my life for January/February!



Ellie came in as a stray with severe demodex, similar to Babar. She is an Old English Bulldogge (kind of a mix between your typical English Bulldog and the larger American Bulldog). In addition to the demodex, she also has severe pyoderma and entropion. Pyoderma is a bacterial infection in the skin causing that lovely yeasty smell, swollen skin and bloody/oozy discharge. Entropion is a typical problem in wrinkly faced dogs, where the eyelids curve in and cause the eyelashes to lay and rub against the eyeball. Yes, that is as painful as it sounds!!

Ellie needs a lot of work. She's on a slew of medications, baths, sprays--pretty much anything you can think of, she's on it. Our veterinarians will also need to perform surgery on her eyes. However, we can't even tackle the entropion until her skin improves.

You would think after all she's been through and her multitude of problems, Ellie might have a little attitude. I mean, who would blame her? Well, you couldn't be more wrong. She is the sweetest thing! She wants nothing more than to cuddle with you, which she doesn't quite understand is something that you may not want given her condition! :)

We sent Ellie to foster last week for the duration of her treatment. Her foster mom reports that she is amazing and looks to be improving every day. She even said that her own cat likes to cuddle with Ellie and sleep curled up next to her! Precious!!



I will be sure to post new photos of Ellie as she transforms from an ugly duckling into a (still wrinkly, no longer stinky) swan! I can't wait to see her.

Babar

Babar was not the first (and certainly not the last!) foster that I’ve taken home. But he has struck the strongest chord and the one that I most regret that I was not in a position to keep.

I had been at the shelter a little over a year and showed up to work one day, early in the morning, ready to unlock all the doors. As I was doing so, someone informed me that there was a small carrier in front of the building, apparently left there overnight. I went to look for the carrier and found what was….a puppy? a piglet? a baby elephant?…shivering inside.

We immediately brought it in the office and found this:





Obviously, I was immediately in love.

Here was this poor, defenseless little creature. He had almost no fur, but instead was covered in scabs and open sores. His skin was so swollen that his paws were HUGE, almost the size of a full grown dog! He had a long scar along the length of his back (from God knows what), was severely malnourished, had badly cropped ears and stunk to high heaven. (This is a smell I’ve almost grown fond of over the years, only because I know that it CAN go away!)

We immediately vaccinated and bathed him. I gave him a bowl of wet and dry food. He ate it and very slowly wagged his tail. We did a skin scrape to determine what condition he suffered from and discovered hundreds of Demodectic mites. These mites are common on all dogs, but depending on their immune systems it may or may not develop into an issue. Most dogs are fine,but some develop patches of hairloss that if not treated turns into a really big problem.

After getting the okay to treat him, we waited through his stray hold to see if anyone would reclaim him. We were hoping no one did, since his previous owners (if any) obviously did not treat him well. No one ever came for him and the time had come, someone had to foster him.
And, well, you can guess how that went.



We started him on a treatment of daily antibiotics, fish oil capsules, ivermectin (to kill the mites) and medicated baths. It definitely was a handful, but worth every moment. Every time I walked him around my apartment complex, people would comment on what a sweet boy he was despite his condition. And lo and behold, after five weeks, he was a completely different dog! His fur had grown back, he gained about 15 pounds and was quite the little porker. Everyone loved him and now it was time to find his forever home.



I couldn’t even imagine a better family to adopt Babar. They had already previously adopted two Staffy mixes from the shelter and thought their family was complete. They came to take pictures of their dogs with Santa and I happened to run into them in the hallway. It was love at first sight! I was crying, they were crying, everyone was crying. They adopted him on the spot and even went back and took a new family photo with Santa and their new addition.

I still see him several times a year and occasionally puppy sit for their pack when they are out of town. His parents even made me a photo booklet of Babar’s first year with them and I love it to death. He is such a ham.







He was a lucky, lucky boy to be abandoned on our doorstep that day.