This is Mercy, formerly named Trouble.
I wasn’t going to foster again, but I armtwisted myself into this one. Although two rescue groups, furrydoc, and her staff have already gone several extra miles for her in the last couple of weeks, she’s a little hard case who needs all the help she can get. How to count her disadvantages?
* Pitbull
* About 10 years old
* Overbred
* Deaf (or nearly so)
* Not housebroken
* Suffering antibiotic-resistant skin sores (though fortunately furrydoc, who’s very good at such things, persuaded a local pharmacy to donate meds that appear to be helping)
* Not gaining weight despite loving care and fancy-schmancy no-grain, hypoallergenic food.
* Stressed to the max and desperately missing the man she’s loved all her life.
Said man is in prison (child molesting, I believe). He handed her off to friends when he went away. They starved her.
Fortunately, his ex-girlfriend took custody of her and turned her over to local rescuers.
I didn’t realize it when I picked her up this afternoon, but she’s from my neighborhood. First thing she did when I got her home was escape the yard when I went inside for a minute. But furrydoc’s office assistant (best observer and critter-networker around — Hi, T!) knew exactly which couple of drug houses Mercy would most likely bee-line for — places her human used to hang out. And one of those is where I found her.
Poor thing, though — she’s within sniffing distance of places she thinks of as “home” and cruel, rotten me is holding her captive. She’s protesting at the moment in a voice that sounds like a rooster trying to crow while being held under water and garrotted. Horrific noise. And loud enough that I fear I’d better go over and explain to the neighbor. (“I’m really not torturing helpless farm animals. Honestly, it’s just a very sad, very bereft dog.”)
Would love to let Mercy hang out with the family. She’s mild-mannered and already gets along fine with Ava and Robbie. But not ’til you understand that my rug’s not your personal potty, girly. Sorry.
How does anybody have a dog for nine or ten years, take her everywhere (which her former owner, however irresponsible otherwise, did) and somehow not house train her? People. Very strange beasts.
But she loved that man and in his way he loved her, and now she just gazes off in the direction of “home” and wonders why I won’t open the gate and let her go.
Not an expert at all with dog rescues but the group shouldn’t have given you this dog knowing she was from your neighborhood. Better for her to make a clean break. And if I can figure that out, then someone should have caught on and put her into a better place.
Oh Claire. What a heartbreaker … bless you for helping her … thank the Lord the ex girlfriend rescued her from the pond scum who were starving her … on the housebreaking issue, that does seem very odd, maybe she has a UTI? Poor woofer, still looking for her human. God.
You do sometimes get yourself into these situations, Claire…
Tell me you were at least armed.
Check for UTI, that housebreaking thing doesn’t make sense.
I ditto the UTI, or possibly bladder drop, or internal damage. Overbreeding after ten years (and physical neglect, I’m sure, as well as ignorance on the part of the owner) might contribute to some of her problem.
Aww, poor puppy. Give her a hug for me. People can be so rotten to animals.
Jim B. — I lean toward agreeing that Mercy shouldn’t be fostered in her own neighborhood. I might not have taken her if I knew she was from here. OTOH, there weren’t a lot of options for her, though some of the rescue folks are working on some, as backups.
Mercy’s doing much better this morning. Even wagged her tail and gave a little face-lick.
I should have asked furrydoc if she’s checked her for UTI. And bladder drop? I’ll have to look that one up. Thanks!
Surprisingly, somebody who actually knows the dog (and her original rescuer) also left a comment, which I didn’t take live. I’m gonna ask him a bit more about her.
She’s beautiful! Thanks for giving her this second chance.
I know nothing about bladder drop (prolapse) in dogs, but I see no reason why it wouldn’t occur. Overbreeding could cause the problem, and poor care would ignore it. IF that’s what she’s got…
It could also lead to UTI – but the antibiotics will probably be helping that.
Ms.. Wolfe, not sure if you have seen the current buzz on sugardine, that’s granulated or powered sugar mixed with betadine, provine iodine, it has made inroads even against msra infections read here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17680256 and video from a vet here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo6ZaBzts0g
MY amstaff always acts out and soils the house when we go away more than overnight, perhaps that is part of it too. Bless you and yours,
Thank you, Rev Tony. Somehow, I’ve totally missed learning about sugardine.
Funny (but predictable) how the gov reacts to it:
http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2007/09/17/sugar-speeds-wo/
Being a foster owner is awesome but I’m curious how good you are at actually finding a home other than your own for a dog? I know most dog lovers struggle with that. My aunt can’t say no to a down and out dog (she’s a vet so there’s plenty of them too)…whenever I’m home I’ll visit her and there’s some new dog(s) there, she usually has around 10-12 at an given time…it’s always “on it’s way to a new home” but then next time I’m there it’ll be wearing a fancy little collar with it’s name on it and is part of the family.
Also…I get peeved hearing people ‘dog shopping’ like they’re trying to buy a new car, trying to run off ‘stats’ of different breeds of dogs all the time. This is gonna sound sickeningly egalitarian but dogs are friends, and I don’t pick my friends based on age and hair color and genetic history. It’s those people that dress up their chihuahuas and run into you in the park and make remarks like “oh that’s really, uh, sweet that you’d KEEP a dog like that*”. Almost all of the dogs I’ve ever had have been mutts or had some part of their body missing or both…or something and I’d take them over any yuppie dog.
(*Granted I usually hear this sort of stuff secondhand from my mom since her job revolves around yuppies and their pampered dogs. Whenever I was around…well, I used to love to watch the looks on people’s faces when their silly pets got assaulted by a pekingese with a missing leg.)
Yeah, winston. “Foster failure” is a malady rescuers are definitely prone to. And OMG, a vet who’s that soft-hearted … oh lordy, I can see the trouble!
Yup, I’ve had foster failures. Ava was meant to be a foster but I fell in love with the little minx. The late Nadja and Suki started as fosters but were pretty much unadoptable, so they ended up with me by default. And Mercy is soooooo sweet and hapless that I already feel my heart (or is it my brain?) softening.
FORTUNATELY, though, Petfinder and all the hardworking little rescue operations around now are making it easier these days to place even hard-case dogs. And I made the rescuers swear-swear-swear that they’d work on finding fur-ever homes so I wouldn’t end up keeping her. Um … except at the moment nobody knows if her health will permit an adoption. So we’ll see. So far, so good. Just gotta see if she can put some weight on.
Also fortunately, we don’t see the “dog shopping” as much around here. Not enough of a yuppie population. But definitely ick …
Looks like that dog will be okay now. We don’t foster dogs, but my wife is sort of fostering the stray cats that live in my back yard.
Last year my dog had a traumatic injury (painful to her, traumatic to my wallet). Am 18 inch long strip of skin was pulled off her hind leg by another dog. It almost perfectly followed the curve of the joint. It was just wide enough and in a flexible enough place that it could not be effectively sutured. Every two days we changed bandages, cleaned the wound and applied honey. It worked great! A few weeks into treatment the doc switched from honey to sugardine. It also worked great! Kept the wound clean and sped up the healing process. Three months later it was healed completely with no scarring and the hair even grew back. Only side affect is the my dog now has a sweet tooth.
“Only side affect is the my dog now has a sweet tooth.”
LOL! Ouch on the injury (to both dog and wallet), but LOL on the sweet tooth. I was already picturing all three dogs competing to lick sugary stuff off Mercy’s infected spots.
Re: sugardine: Sugar has been applied to bedsores for years, and it works! I wasn’t aware that sugar had actually been banned for medical purposes, but I’m not surprised. It stopped being widely used about the time drug companies started getting into bed with the med-gov cartel. Guess the pharmaceuticals couldn’t take the cheaper competition.
I wonder whether sugar has actually been banned for medical purposes or is just “not approved” by the FDA. Hm. Which I suppose is pretty much the same thing. (rolleyes) Sigh.
“The cheaper competition” — in spite of the fedgov doing everything it can to make U.S. sugar the most expensive in the world!
http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Markets/US-sugar-price-supports-have-massively-distorted-market-consultant-says
Claire,
With all due respect, please be cautious using “sugardine”. I asked my son, who is a highly esteemed flight medic (currently working in Iraq; his wife is a doctor), about this. Please note that my original query was in reference to a gunshot wound, hence the specific nature of his reply:
This is my opinion. First of all, sugar in a gunshot wound could easily lead to an embolism traveling to your heart, lungs,brain which could be fatal. Secondly, Povidone Iodine otherwise known as Betadine has been removed from the wound packing protocol for years due to it’s toxic effect on living cells. I would not advise this. Gunshot wounds or other penetrating trauma must be irrigated out and the osmotic gradient this would create would not be able to effectively “trap” bacteria.
Sam, I have to agree and disagree with your son’s comments. He’s right as far as his application goes, but wrong re: use of Betadine.
While I wouldn’t put Betadine directly in a gunshot wound either, it hasn’t “been removed” from the wound packing protocol at all, at least not in civilian hospitals I’ve worked in. (As a nurse over the past 50 years.) Protocols do come and go – and often come back again, just like clothing fashions! – but I didn’t work in any ‘backward’ hospitals. (In fact over the past thirty years they’ve too often tried to keep up with medical “progress” by surpassing the new-rules-put-into-effect while not fully comprehending their consequences.)
In any case I’ve never seen sugar put in *any* clean (uninfected and/or short-term) wound, that’s true. It’s only been used (in my experience) for deeply infected and/or necrotic tissue damage – and the Betadine would be outside dressings applied over the sugar application.
I’m not sure under what circumstances sugardine would be applied on a dog.
Ditto Pat on the merry-go-round of protocols… really nutty sometimes. I spent a number of years as an APRN for home health/hospice, with lots of wound care, IV therapy and central lines.
Plain old soap and water is the best wound treatment, and the more the better once the bleeding is under control, though deep and dirty wounds need to bleed a certain amount to clean them out.
Betadine is best used as a topical skin prep for invasive procedures. It comes and goes as an acceptable skin prep for peripheral IV and urinary catheters. I can’t ever remember using it IN any wounds, however. It is cytotoxic – meaning it damages cells, and that includes both bacteria and body tissues. Skin cells are much tougher than those in an open wound.
Because something “works” at times or in some situations doesn’t make it the ideal treatment or product. I can’t see mixing betadine with sugar as anything but a last ditch effort in a field situation with no other options. And if you had the foresight to bring betadine, you could bring any of a dozen or more products that would do the job without the risks.
Claire,
in your post above you said Mercy’s been “overbred”, so I’m assuming she’s only recently been spayed. She might be allergic to the internal sutures used for tying off her tubes.
When I adopted Miss Sadie last year she had been spayed two days before, but ended up in the vet ER because of complications. There the doc did an MRI and discovered severe internal swelling. As it turned out Sadie had just started to go into heat when they spayed her and that’s what caused the problem, but according to the doc there are about 1% of dogs who are allergic to these sutures. Sadie was housetrained as well, but with inside all swelled up just couldn’t hold any water. The next day (and $450 later) she was much better and didn’t have any accidents since.
Then again, it might just be the stress and Mercy’s missing her former owner…
All the best to her, may she find a good home to have at least some years of true happiness!!
Kyle MacL,
Yikes. Allergic to sutures? That’s a new one on me (and must have been a big shock to you).
It’s not the case here — for somewhat unfortunate reasons. Normally she’d have been spayed as soon as she was turned in. But because she’s not gaining weight and we don’t know what the problem is, she won’t be spayed until (or if) we know she’s going to thrive and be adoptable.
Give Sadie a pat for me and hang on to your wallet. 😉
Just checking to see if any updates on Mercy ….
Thanks, ML. That’s nice of you.
Well, there’s some good and some bad. She’s adjusting to the other dogs and has been kind and gentle with every human she’s met. Tonight she picked up a tennis ball and for the first time tried to play, though she didn’t quite seem to know what to do.
On the bad side, she has severe separation anxiety. When crated she makes a caterwaul that scares the neighbors. Tries to eat the crate, too. But when uncrated and left alone, she’s an engine of destruction, which surprised everybody. A real problem child, this one.
She’s eating well but still way too skinny. Sure wish we knew why she can’t gain weight.
Checking to see whether she has a UTI …
C.W. wrote, “furrydoc, who’s very good at such things, persuaded a local pharmacy to donate meds that appear to be helping”
What exactly are those meds?
IAM — The donated antibiotic is ciproflaxacin. It’s clearing up her skin sores and may also be taking care of her “pee problem” (cross fingers).
General update: Other than having eaten my laundry room when left alone uncrated (and trying to eat the crate before that), Mercy is doing very well. But I do think I’m going to go back to the name “Trouble.” 😉
She’s been left alone too much, and is fearful of the unknown (person or situation) which might show up anytime. She may even have been left alone when delivering her pups.
Was she trained to fight before she was used for breeding? She looks like a resigned fatalist, an unhappy survivor just putting in time. How is she getting along with Robbie?
Pat — I’m pretty sure she was never a fighter. In fact, although she was certainly neglected in some ways (e.g. not spayed, overbred, and not fed well), from what I know, she had it better than a lot of dogs. Her human adored her and took her everywhere with him.
Of course, I don’t know everything about her history. So who can say? She may indeed have been abandoned, alone, and frightened some time in her past.
She’s getting along just fine with both Ava and Robbie. Although they’ve each “had words” with her once, she’s so mild-mannered and inoffensive that they just don’t seem to find much reason to mess with her. Also, although Robbie still thinks of himself as king of the house and undisputed boss dog, his guilty secret is that, in his old age, he’s actually becoming friendly to other dogs (especially females).