Marshall, Marshall, Marshall

A couple of months ago I received an application from a woman who wanted to surrender her Lab, Marshall. She said on her application that she rescued Marshall, a black Lab about 4 years old, from a high-kill shelter in North Carolina in December because "she couldn't stand to see another nice black dog put down."

When I met with her at her house, she struck me as a dog person with a good heart. She told me Marshall had been heartworm-positive and that she had had his heartworm treated. She told me that shotgun pellets in his left front shoulder were the cause of his limp, which she said did not hold him back. I took her to be a sincere person who genuinely cared about dogs. Marshall himself turned out to be a huge black Lab, nearly 100 pounds, with a gigantic head and a heart to match.

I took Marshall into rescue in late August and gave him to a first-time foster in Ocala, thinking he would be an easy dog for a newbee. The first thing we do with any new dog is take him to the vet. Marshall's former owner had given us his North Carolina shelter records, and he was up to date on vaccines and was already neutered. All he needed was his microchip and a fecal test, I told the vet. Heartworm test, he asked? Oh, right, I said, I'm sure he will be negative but we should do a test. Well, guess what. He was heartworm-positive.

A healthy percentage of the dogs we take into rescue here in Florida have heartworm, which is a nasty long, skinny worm that resides in a dog's heart and lungs. It is easily prevented with a relatively inexpensive monthly medication, but many dog owners do not bother to give it, the same way they don't spay or neuter or apply Frontline for fleas. Dogs that have heartworm that's left untreated slowly deteriorate. Their fur becomes dry and brittle, they become tired and winded with exercise, and they lose their zest for life. Imagine how it would feel to have live parasites crawling around in your heart and arteries.

Treatment for a dog with heartworm usually entails up to three injections with a drug called immiticide, which is an arsenic derivative -- in other words, a poison. The drug does a good job killing the worms; the worms are then absorbed by the dog's body over a period of weeks. During that time, it's critical to not get the dog's heart rate up, lest the worm debris migrate to the lungs and cause an embolism and sudden death. The injections are painful and the recovery is uncomfortable. Because most people do not want to adopt dogs with heartworm, our rescue pays for them to be treated with immiticide before they are adopted.

So Marshall would need heartworm treatment, which wouldn't ordinarily pose a huge problem, except that in early August, the only company that makes immiticide, Merial, announced that it was completely out of the drug and didn't know when it would have any more. This news changed everything for our rescue. We would have to take in fewer heartworm dogs, knowing that they would not be adopted for months, if ever. The heartworm dogs we already had, we would have to try to adopt out to folks willing to take a chance that someday the drug would come back.

Thankfully, a few weeks ago Merial began importing supply from Europe, so everyone is hopeful supplies will be plentiful again in the near future. But for now, availability is tight. I managed to secure one injection of immiticide for Marshall. The protocol we are using is daily doxycycline (an antibiotic that weakens the worms), monthly doses of Advantage Multi, a heartworm preventive that over time kills adult worms, and one injection of immiticide instead of the series of three recommended by the American Heartworm Society. Today was Marshall's day for his one injection.

So today I drove to Ocala while it was still dark to meet Marshall's foster in a McDonald's parking lot. I have three healthy dogs in my house, and when you meet a dog that isn't well, you can see it. Marshall just didn't have that sparkle that a healthy Lab has. He's still sweet and wags his tail, but it's just a little subdued. It made me more determined than ever to make him well. Here was another sweet dog who was dealt a bad hand.

Marshall was found to have an enlarged spleen during his initial intake vet visit. We paid for an ultrasound and there was no sign of a tumor. The heartworm vet said his tummy was tender, probably because of the enlarged spleen, which was probably enlarged because of the heartworm. A blood test showed his heartworm load to be moderate (versus light or heavy). Which led me to wonder: Did his owner get him treatment or didn't she? When I found out Marshall was heartworm positive and tried to call and ask her about it, she wouldn't answer the phone. I consider myself a decent judge of character and can hardly believe she was untruthful about treating him for heartworm. We have papers from the North Carolina shelter so that part is true. It could be the treatment was inadequate. Anyway, lesson learned. From now on, owner surrenders will have to take their dogs to the vet before I take them in, unless the owners are destitute. (Which they often claim to be. Then again, I would have taken Marshall in regardless.)

Poor Marshall didn't have a very pleasant time today, but the vet is hopeful that by January or February he'll be heartworm-free. I made an appointment today with a University of Florida orthopedic specialist to see if any more can be done for his bad shoulder. We will do everything we can to help him. I am already envisioning the healthy, happy boy he will soon be.

Buster-sitting

I first learned of Buster when Super-Volunteer Bob forwarded me his shelter pictures. He looked sad and lost and so obviously a beautiful chocolate Lab. Don't ask me how these gorgeous purebred dogs end up in shelters. Clearly someone went to the trouble of buying him from what would appear to be a pretty darned good breeder, then didn't microchip him, didn't neuter him. And he was such a total Velcro dog that I was sure he didn't run away. He was a stray, so it's almost certain someone dumped him.

Here are some of his shelter pics:

Buster is only about 2 years old and he's nearly 80 pounds but he is just a big baby of a dog. He just wants to eat, play and be loved, and there is not an ounce of meanness in him. A couple of days after I got him, we were walking him in our neighborhood and he saw a squirrel. He forgot himself for a moment and bolted after the squirrel so fast that his collar slipped over his head. So there I was, in the middle of a cul-de-sac with a collarless dog I'd just met who didn't know the name we'd given him (which at the time was Winston). He was taking off at full speed toward the squirrel. I yelled "WINSTON!" without the slightest hope that it would do any good. Winston/Buster immediately stopped in his tracks, turned around, ran back and sat down right in front of me. I put his collar back on, tightened it, and off we went.

A couple from Gainesville who were on their honeymoon in Hawaii who had been talking about adopting a Lab for more than a year saw him on our website and called me during their honeymoon to ask about him. A week later, they adopted him and renamed him Buster. He has blossomed into a blocky-headed athletic boy with perfect house manners. He has visited several times while his owners are out of town and he really livens up the place. Even Matix and Didi (aka Fuddy and Duddy) dig him.

Buster today:

Saying goodbye to Lily

Today brought a reminder that rescuing dogs is not always a happy experience. This morning I made the decision to euthanize a foster dog because she was suffering and was not going to get better. No one who rescues dogs wants that kind of outcome. We rescue dogs to save their lives, not end them. But part of rescue is making the difficult decision when it has to be made, and Lily was one of those decisions.

I had Lily, age roughly 7, for only three days, but she was in our rescue for nearly three months, having battled several other health issues, including kennel cough and a serious infection, in the interim. A volunteer from the Tampa area pulled her from a shelter where she had been left. She had a microchip, but when the shelter called the listed owner, she claimed she had given the dog away to someone. When pressed for details about the someone, she said she couldn't remember.

When the folks in Tampa got Lily, she had a distorted skull, or a "large, hard, bony protuberance," as I later read in her medical records. The first I heard about her was last week, when I was asked to keep her at my house for a couple of days while she underwent tests at the nearby University of Florida vet school. At that point all I had heard was that Lily had "a lump on her head." So I wasn't prepared for what I saw. Lily's head was grossly misshapen, as though her skull had been implanted with a rock the size of a potato. One side of her head was higher than the other, and the growth was so large that it had pulled her skin unnaturally tight, making her eyes wide and turned up at the corners, like a woman with a bad brow lift.

At my house, it was evident that Lily wasn't feeling well. She stared blankly and her eyes were lifeless. She shook her head, was wobbly on her feet, and seemed exhausted and defeated much of the time. I was looking forward to hearing what the doctor would say so we could make a decision right away. Our super-volunteer Bob came by to get her Monday morning, then called half an hour later to say he had gotten the appointment date wrong; it was next Monday. My heart sank because I didn't know whether she could -- or should -- stay alive until then.

The UF specialist had seen Lily's ultrasound and had made a preliminary diagnosis of multilobular osteochondrosarcoma, or MLO. It is a benign tumor that apparently has a pretty good cure rate if caught early enough. But Lily was not an early catch. This tumor was huge, and she was symptomatic. Surgery is the only option for these tumors, and I'm not a big believer in putting dogs through huge surgeries where the benefits are questionable. I discussed her situation with others in rescue, and we agreed. So in a way, the appointment snafu was a blessing in disguise. The plan had been to have her tumor biopsied, but why? No matter what we found, surgery was unlikely to be a good option for Lily.

So the goal became to try to keep Lily comfortable enough to make it to her appointment, just to hear what the specialist had to say. We tried to be encouraging with each wag of the tail, and she did eat and drink and pee and poop until the end. But she was existing, not living. On Monday night I came back from an errand and found her in a heap on the floor, not moving and unresponsive. I didn't know what was wrong but I rummaged around and found one Rimadyl, a pain medication, and gave it to her at around 9 p.m. She woke up the next morning almost bouncy, which confirmed that she had been in pain the night before.

I decided to get a supply of pain meds from the vet, hoping they would carry her through to the appointment. But subsequent Rimadyls did not have the same miraculous effect. She was just out of it.

On Tuesday night, my husband let her outside in the dark to go to the bathroom, and she didn't come back in right away as usual. He said she was just standing there in the dark. I went to look and that was exactly what she was doing. I had to call her several times before she came in. "This isn't good," he said, and at that point I decided to make an appointment with our Lab Rescue vet.

I decided to keep an open mind and listen to what our vet, Dr. Shores, had to say. I explained Lily's situation, ending by saying that I was asking myself whether it was in her best interest to keep her alive at this point. He was unequivocal: No. "If you had something like that in your head," he said, "how do you think you would feel?" That was all I needed to hear.

I stayed with her throughout, petting her and telling her how sorry I was. I thought of my two dogs, whom I've had since puppyhood, and how lucky they've been to have lives unscathed by disease and abandonment. Life is just unfair sometimes, to people and to animals. Lily was one of the unlucky ones. We take some comfort in knowing she was loved by her foster families during her final days. But this was not the outcome anyone wanted.

Rest in peace, sweet girl.