When we agree to take in dogs, we rarely know what medical conditions we are going to be faced with. Obviously, if they have been hit by a car or can’t walk we know, but many we can’t see. Once we have welcomed a dog, we cannot turn back, and we have said many times we would rather run the ship ashore doing the right thing.  Antonella is one of those cases.  Her story is long and complex and we hope you agree she is worth everything we can do to help her. 

Read on for more...

The skin conditions and other issues that we can show you in pictures are the easy ones for us to fundraiser for. Anyone who has followed us for any length of time has seen our fundraisers for the “dreaded broken pelvis”. Healthy looking dogs with terrible and expensive conditions to fix are understandably hard to fundraise for....

It’s even harder for us when we take in a dog and know they have a small problem and then it turns out that they have a BIG problem. Also, fundraising for a dog that is already in our care is extremely difficult. Everyone looks at them and thinks, “They are already safe with DRSF, why do they need help with funds now?”

So here we are, pleading for help for Antonella who falls into both of those categories… can’t see her conditions AND she’s been with us for a while.

Antonella came to us from Puerto Rico 2 months ago. She’s a small and sweet 8 year old girl, got some short doxie legs and the cutest little purple tongue you have ever see and we knew she was heartworm positive. We treat lots of dogs each year with heartworm disease, surely we can do that for this little one.

Once we got her and did our initial assessment, we knew this wasn’t any ordinary heartworm treatment. We have since found that Antonella suffers with a plethora of complicated illnesses each one making treating the next even more complicated.

She has advanced heartworm disease, her heart is affected and has a murmur. She was also in heat and her uterus has been far too used and was in danger of developing pyometra. She’s much skinnier than she should be and, after weeks of good food, she still hasn’t gained weight.

Her mouth is one of the nastiest, rottenest ones we have EVER seen (and that’s saying a lot). After bloodwork, ultrasounds and echocardiogram, we found that her kidneys are iffy (which makes her pee often), she has bilirubin in her urine (which makes that urine a glowing orange color) and she’s anemic.

Our next step in the diagnostic process was to get her to Dr. Kilcullen at Broward Veterinary Specialists for an internal medicine consultation and to see what, if anything, we could do for her. There she was diagnosed with IMHA, which is an auto immune disease where her body is destroying its own red blood cells.

All that brings us to several conversations about what to do for her.

There are risks with fixing any of these problems independently, the treatment for IMHA is a blast of steroids, but that would suppress her immune system and then the likelihood of her going septic, from the brewing infection in her uterus and the cesspool that is her mouth, is higher than we would like to chance. We can’t treat the heartworm disease because of the murmur and the IMHA… and around and around we went.

Many may say, why do anything? Just let her go, the answer to that is because she’s so very loving and so very happy. While several of these things will eventually end her life, we aren’t there yet and we are a group that always tries to give a dog a positive outcome if possible. Top that all off with the fact that she has been a foster at the home of Pres Pam and Dr. Bruce for the last couple of months and here we are. Antonella has wormed her way into the heart of Dr. Bruce in a way that rarely happens and even without that, she deserves a deserves a chance.

So Pam, Dr. Bruce, Dr. Kilcullen, Dr. Tassino (she helps Dr. Bruce out monthly) and the Drs at LeadER here is the plan:

24 hours of maintenance IV fluids to flush out her kidneys at LeadER.
One of the staff at Dr. Bruce’s will pick her up after that 24 hours and bring her to Dr. Bruce’s for surgery. Dr. Tassino will spay her and she will have a dental to get those rotten teeth taken care of.

As soon as she’s awake and ok, she will be taken back to LeadER for another 25 hours of fluids to keep her kidneys as healthy as possible. She will then see Dr. Schroeder the cardiologist at LeadER to decide what the next best step for her heart is. She will then, after all healed, see Dr. Kilcullen again to start treatment for the IMHA.

If all goes as well as we all hope for, she will not only be the sweetest and happiest little girl around, but will also be healthy and be able to get a family of her very own.

All of this is risky, riskier than normal anesthetic procedures, but we have decided that we cannot just let her die. We hope you agree that she’s worth the risk. 

Antonella's life has not been kind and this is her one shot to give her some time to live the life she has deserved all along. Can she count on you for a few dollars to help her?