Rally

In Memoriam

Age: Adult
Sex: Female
Breed: Mixed Breed
About Rally:

Well, here we go with all we have learned, we will take this one day at a time and I will know more tomorrow after we get the radiology report back and the complete blood panel back. That being said here is what is being reported and it’s a lot.

I want to start with, she feels happy, and good and spunky, but she has many issues with breathing and when she gets spunky she cannot keep up with that and at the shelter she needed oxygen for her exam. For Dr. Reno her exam just wore her out and she needed to rest.

First problem is her throat, this is the most concerning thing and really will be what might seal her fate where she can’t go on. Her palate is very, very long and swollen, her laryngeal area is problematic and X-rays suggest she might have partial collapse.

I told Dr. Reno today, sedate her get x-rays of her chest and get a look in her throat, if she has a big mass back there we will not wake her up and let her go, a mass in the throat is a big dead end. She did not see a mass, so we continued on.

She has a very enlarged heart, her lungs look terrible, both of these may be because of heart worms but we don’t know that just yet. Her liver is large we don’t know why, will know more with bloodwork, she has a head tilt, indicating inner ear infections but she doesn’t have any facial paralysis and her blink response is good, she does have dry eye in both eyes.

She needs an echo of her heart and an abdominal ultrasound to look at both her heart and her liver. Once we get more of this diagnostic work done we will know if she can be saved and live a comfortable life. Estimation is she is 8 years old, she does have ear infections in both ears, but surprisingly they aren’t horrible and we can see in the canals. She has nasal fold infection, infection around her feet, an umbilical hernia, a protruding rectum, dwarfed front legs, and if thats not enough she’s in heat.

What we have to do after some more diagnostics come through, is determine if she is in heart failure and if she is, is it due to heart worms? from there we can try and stabilize her with medication, and the surgeons will need that and the echo to even entertain taking her to surgery to look at her palate and her trachea and her larynx to see if they can help her.

When I warned about the expense for a dog like her I meant it, this is no easy dog, there are layers and layers of problems here, and its very much a one step at time rescue knowing at any of the steps we could say we have to stop here and let her go peacefully. I’m just not ready for that today, but that might be tomorrow.

Hopefully you can understand all this entails, be understanding if it doesn’t go the way we hoped, and try and be optimistic, thats my plan, optimism until faced with hard decisions. We are up for the task, and our medical team is up for the challenge, if she can be made better, she will be, that I can promise you.

Say goodnight Rally, we are all rooting for you

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We raised some very good funds to help this girl, she has been tagged for us, Emma will go and get her here in a little bit and get her to the vet.

I want to say a few things, first I needed to clean up some comments on this post, it never ceases to amaze me the assumptions people make about a rescue. “Shame on us for looking for donations, you must be a flipper, I am unfollowing this page”,

Yes I blocked several like this.

If you don’t know who we are and the work we have done for well over a decade, perhaps you look into it before making stupid comments. Dog flippers we are not, looking for donations to help a dog, why yes, yes we are, last time I checked the ranch didn’t have a single money tree on it.

Common sense seems to fly from peoples minds.

On another note, many worried that she would be in pain, I need to make this clear, we don’t support keeping any dog alive thats in pain without a path forward to help. Can a dog be suffering when they first come in? of course they can, no different than a human that is sick and suffering with pain or broken bones or a plethora of things, what’s important is can we solve the issues? if yes, we go after them and try and get the dog healthy, pain free and happy.

Will she be adoptable, the answer to that depends on how she responds to whatever ails her. You see the adopting public has to worry about the expense of adopting a dog just the like rescue has to worry about the cost of taking the dog in and vetting it. Money is a very, very big part of rescue on both ends, the rescue itself and the adopters, that’s just the way it is.

Does that mean if she is on a life time of drugs to keep her healthy and pain free that nobody will adopt her? no, it doesn’t it just means its little harder to find that person.

Being practical, and responsible with the choices we make are first and foremost, how we spend donor dollars is very important, the point of last nights post was to include our donors in the discussion, its as simple as that. It was a pretty overwhelming response that the majority wanted us to rescue her, and commit to the cost, and commit to her, and see what we can do going forward.

I also appreciate the comments of those that felt that their decision would be no, it is also a practical and responsible decision to feel that the amount of money you spend on one dog could rescue 4 or 5 other dogs, we get that, we know that, we struggle with that, every damn day.

So this time we very much appreciate including all of you in this process, I think its very important for donors to have some input in rescuing dogs, for anyone who saw that as a negative, please move along.

So we shall wait to see this girl later today and hope that all of things that are wrong with her we can help with one step at a time. If not we will cross those bridges as we come to them.

Thank you to all who donated, thank you to all who offered their insight without name calling and ridiculous comments, I think this was a very informative opportunity for all of us to discuss our thoughts.

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