I have been on loan from my own sanctuary working with Best Friends organizing transportation for animals rescued during Hurricane Katrina for months. After returning from New Orleans for the last time (hopefully) I was asked to help with one more transport out of Waveland, Mississippi. In the myriad of emails associated with a large transport, one email caught my eye, “baby Rott with broken back”. It had been a long time since I took on a new ward; working with children and disabled animals is what my sanctuary does. I had been much too busy helping out with the hurricane. As hurricane business was slowly winding down, I immediately called and asked for more information. I was told that she, Precious, had been brought into the shelter because the owner couldn’t care for her with all the other pups. Precious’s back was probably broken, having been stepped on by her mother. A vet tech friend of the shelter took Precious home and had a vet take a look at her. He said that he felt her spine was broken but stable and she would need extensive therapy in order to be a three legged, walking dog some day.
Getting her back was quite an ordeal! There was a stewardess who had agreed to bring Precious with her to Salt Lake City and I would fly to Salt Lake for the second leg of this sweet puppy’s journey. But the stewardess was the last standby person to get a seat on the plane and they called her off, because a paying customer needed the seat. I had made some contacts during my months of phone work transporting animals all over the country and I called the General Manager of the airport in Mississippi hoping that he would make an announcement to all of the airport passengers. There must be somebody willing to transport this tiny puppy to the help she needed. Then Precious missed her direct flight (rainy day traffic) and just barely caught the last flight that could connect her through Atlanta. I rescheduled my first flight and then missed my second flight and caught the last flight that would bring me into Salt Lake, just in time to meet Precious. For a brief moment, I wondered if it was really supposed to happen with all of the trouble and then I set eyes on the cutest little Rotty puppy I’d ever seen.
After picking her up at the airport, I took her to an emergency vet in Salt Lake because she looked dehydrated from her travels. That veterinarian told me that he didn’t believe that her back was broken, but thought that her leg had been broken in several places. Whatever the problem, I was committed to helping this little puppy. Best Friends Animal Society felt that they could help us both and accepted Precious into the sanctuary and the Guardian Angel program. Precious and I stayed at the home of the Delta airlines representative whose life we had made a rescheduling nightmare that day. We had a lovely evening and she helped us catch a flight back home the next morning.
Since Precious arrived at my home about a week ago, she has been to visit the vets at Best Friends as well as Dr. Patrick Wesley, a specialist at the VCA in Las Vegas who did a full work up and series of x-rays. We discovered that her spine is in fact, not broken. It looks like she has a potentially genetic condition known as hemivertabrae which means that the back of the spine is unstable and may be pinching something. However, the tests were inconclusive and more tests are necessary.
We all agree that the faster we can figure out what’s going on, the better we can proceed helping her get well. She’s sitting up and really has a will to live. She’s headed to see another specialist next week. Everyone who meets her thinks that she is just “Precious”, and she is. But my nickname for her is Surely. Because she sure is precious, she sure is strong, she sure is a handful and she reminds me of Shirley Temple with her spunk and those Rotty dimples!
