Faith and Hope in Missouri

Faith and Hope

Faith and Hope are another two girls
in the long line of puppymill dogs that
have been coming into rescue lately.

Details are sketchy but they were part
of a raid on a puppymill somewhere in
Kansas and ended up in a shelter
there.

As usual both dogs have health
issues. They both had lice when they
came into the shelter and have teeth
issues that will have to be addressed.

Faith has a wound on her leg that the
shelter says is gangerous. They think
the leg may have to come off but we
will not make any determination on
that until she has been seen by our
vet.

We will be picking both dogs up on
Friday, March 31 and taking them
both straight to our vet.

These pictures were provided by the
shelter for us to ID the dogs with.

Please check back for new pictures
and information on their health after
that.

April 1st Update

Today Faith got to spend several
hours outside running and playing
and doing whatever she wanted to
do. It took her a few minutes to
realize she was free to run around
and then proceeded to run and have
a great time with the other dogs. As
you can see in the new pics, she is
feeling a lot better.

Faith is very, very shy around people.
She has not come around to
believing that people can be good
but she craves attention so much that
even when she is running away or
trying to fit herself tightly into the
corner of her crate, her little tail wags
and wags and she whines - she wants
to come but she is still just too
scared. But, we think she will come
around.

There are also pictures of Faith's
foot. Not sure where the shelter came
up with gangrene - there is no
infection and she is not in any danger
of losing the leg thank goodness.

After exams and x-rays we have come
to the conclusion that sometime in
her life at the mill she got her foot
either caught in a cage or under
sheet metal or something similar. Her
foot was hopelessly caught, for how
long we don't know and she was
forces to rip it out, tearing off all the
skin, fat and muscles on the top of
her foot and exposing the tendons.
The black skin is a result of skin just
growing back over the tendons on its
own.

The x-rays show the tendons are
damaged and constricted from the
injury. The vet thinks it may be able
to be corrected by surgery and we
will have her seen by a specialist to
see what can be done to give her full
function of the foot as the wrist is
bent does not extend correctly.

Faith is a very young girl, probably
only around 2 years of age so we
want to give her the best flexibility as
she can get. We will post more
information on what type and if she
needs surgery after seeing the
specialist.

Hope is not feeling very well. She is
older than Faith - around 5 years of
age. Her front teeth are worn from
chewing on the bars of her cage in
the mill. She is suffering the effects
of the spay and probably coming
down with kennel cough from the
shelter.

She is such a sweet, quiet girl. She
likes people and wants to lean up
against you and be petted.

At the vet yesterday we found she
had a severe ear infection in one ear
- we could not believe that the
shelters vet, who spayed them both,
did not clean the ear when she was
under. Our vet cleaned them as well
as he could without putting her under
again.

Her teeth are a mess as well and she
will lose several but the vet wanted
to wait awhile since she was just
under anesthesia so we will wait a
week or so before going in to deep
clean the ear and take care of the
teeth, she also has a small growth on
her neck that needs to be removed.

We will get more pictures of Hope
when she is feeling better so please
check back.

April 15 Update

The girls continue to do well. We got
new pictures of Hope today now that
she is feeling better. As you can see
both girls have lost that shell
shocked look and are getting smiles
on their faces. Hope is SUCH a sweet,
sweet girl. She loves attention and
wants nothing more than to be right
up against you at all times. She had a
very nasty case of kennel cough on
top of her bad teeth and ear infection
and lost weight that she could not
afford to lose. She is eating again
now and as soon as she is back to a
better weight she will go in and have
her ears deep cleaned, her teeth
taken care of and the growth on her
neck removed.

Faith is still very very shy but she is
making small baby steps to move
towards trusting people. She will now
come up and wag her tail and give
kisses while in her crate. She will
take time but eventually will be more
trusting. After further review of her
x-rays and consultation with another
vet, the decision has been made to
just leave her foot alone. She walks,
runs and plays on it just fine and we
don't want to take the chance of
doing more harm than good by going
in and messing with it. The fur around
will eventually hide the worst of it
when it has grown out longer.

We will up date again when Hope has
her surgery.

June 2006 - Hope's Surgery and a
Forever Home for Faith

Hope's surgery went well. She lost
several teeth and had the rest
cleaned. Her ears were deep cleaned
and a small growth on her neck was
removed. She is now gaining weight
back and doing well.

Faith was adopted by
Stephanie Loup of Illinois and
joins Louis who was our
Adoption #167

CONGRATULATIONS!

FAITH