Dogged Blog

Suzie's home! But she does need some help...

Suzie the little white dog is home from her long hospitalization. She is still weak, but she's eating and no longer vomiting. It's been a long, long road for her and for Jan, the wonderful volunteer who is responsible for getting Suzie out of the shelter last Christmas in the first place.

So many of you helped Suzie before, and have offered to help again. Jan and I have paid around half her veterinary bill, which is around $1700 -- and yes, her veterinarian donated many services and procedures to her himself. I'm sure all of you know how much a hospitalization of over a week would normally cost, especially with all the diagnostic tests that had to be done.

Her vet has added to his kindness by giving us some time to try to raise money for the balance of her bill. If those of you who opened your hearts to this little girl before could find a few dollars to send her way now, it would be very much appreciated by all of us. 

I created a donation page at Fundable.com -- where we did Suzie's original fundraiser -- and if you can pass it along to your friends and email lists, that would be wonderful. Her complete story is here and the donation page is here:

Donate to help Suzie!

The donations are handled by PayPal, but you don't need a PayPal account to donate. And neither Fundable.com nor I will ever see your payment info.

If you can't give right now, please just keep your good thoughts coming her way! Thanks, everyone!

Little dog, big problems: Another update on Suzie

I posted earlier about Suzie's setback. This little dog has been through an awful lot, and my heart's just breaking for her tonight.

After spending the night at the ER, Suzie then spent the day at the vet, where she's depressed and leaking bloody poop and urine (due to her spay incontinence, not a urinary tract problem -- they had to stop her Proin because she's vomiting so much). Here she is at the vet this evening:

I'm speaking to her veterinarian in the morning, and may have more specific information then, but I believe they're thinking right now that she has an ulcer and possibly Addison's Disease. I have no idea why all this just started happening after this leg injury and am still confused about the role of the medications they've given her, and hopefully I can clear that up when I speak with her vet.

Jan brought her home for the night, and had this to say:

Suzie home 10 pm...hasn't lifted her head...feeling pretty bad....she's been turned on her other size, massaged, and changed...oozing stool with blood...she had to pee and I thought she wanted the inside of her leg rubbed...she spread her legs to let me catch urine in tissue and clean her...poor dear...

It's so hard to see her come back from literally a day from death to a happy, healthy life, and then crash like this.

We'll keep you updated...

Suzie the little Internet rescue dog has a setback

Suzie's story caught my eye around Christmas time last year. A volunteer at a shelter in Ontario, Canada, felt the little white dog wasn't getting the medical care she needed, and just a day or so before she was slated to be euthanized, she got her out of the shelter.

A group of us from all over the world -- including many of my readers here -- heard her story, and helped pay for what turned out to be a pretty expensive surgery for Suzie.

Jan, the volunteer, ended up adopting her permanently, and in the last few months, the story of how we saved Suzie has been in dozens of news stories in the US and Canada. Just this month I was flipping through "Healthy Pets," the magazine distributed through veterinary hospitals all over the country, and there was a little recap of her story! Our Suzie is famous.

Unfortunately, three days ago she injured her leg. Fearing a cruciate ligament injury, Jan took her to the vet, where Suzie had a bad reaction to some pain medication she was given there (or at least, that's the assumption at present). She's been hospitalized ever since. None of the local vet hospitals have any overnight staffing, all having agreed to send their patients to a central ER instead -- or leave them hospitalized without supervision all night, which is always completely unacceptable.

The first two nights Jan brought Suzie home, but the little dog kept vomiting. She has spay incontinence, which has been easily controlled with Proin, but since she's throwing up, they've had to stop that, so she's urinating on her bed, too. Jan had to get some sleep after two nights of being up with Suzie, and there was no way to keep her in a hospital without anyone there, and just lie in her own puke and pee until someone came in the morning. So I paid for her to be hospitalized overnight at the overnight ER clinic.

We still aren't sure what's wrong with Suzie. They're saying it's a muscle injury, and everyone is being kind of stingy with the pain meds. There are no local vet specialty practices, and the nearest vet college is 6 hours away. Because of her bad reaction to the injectable NSAID she was given, they don't want to give her anything like Metacam, even though she took it before with no problems. She still seems to be in considerable pain, and we're having trouble getting that effectively dealt with.

I'll keep everyone updated on what's going on with her, and hopefully she'll be back at home tonight and on the mend. Please send good thoughts her way, and also to poor sleep-deprived Jan. And since many of you offered to help with future vet bills, I'll just say that for the moment I think we're okay, but if things change, we'll let you know!

On the Internet, everyone helps your dog

Crossposted at Pet Connection.

I first "met" Suzie, or at least heard her story, on a canine nutrition email list I co-moderate. A member who volunteers at a shelter in Ontario, Canada, was wondering if there was a nutritional therapy that might help a little dog in the shelter who was dribbling bloody urine and not getting better on antibiotics.

I'm a bit of a fanatic on the subject of properly treating and diagnosing canine bladder infections, so I told her to sign the dog out of the shelter and I'd pay for a visit to her veterinarian for some essential diagnostic tests.

It turned out Suzie needed quite a bit more help than we'd thought. She had a bladder infection, but the real problem was a bladder stone around a third the size of her bladder. From my column this week at SFGate.com:

What followed next will be familiar to anyone who watched Barack Obama's masterful use of social media to drive the best-funded, most grassroots-powered political campaign in history. Dozens of people took advantage of blogs, secure instant fundraising sites, PayPal, Facebook and e-mail lists to spread the word about Suzie.

In less than five hours, contributors from five countries raised over $1,100, more than enough to cover Suzie's medical bills. A few days later she had surgery, received some new, more effective antibiotics and even had her teeth cleaned. And instead of being euthanized, she's romping in the Canadian snow with her foster mom's other dogs, healthy and happy.

There's probably been no more empowering revolution in the animal welfare world than the rise of the Internet and social media. With a single blog post, email, tweet, or Facebook status update, animal lovers can find about about dogs of their favorite breed who end up in shelters half a continent away, bring home the pets of soldiers in Iraq, adopt a pet from a shelter, and get help with their veterinary bills.

They can also find out what's going on -- information that can save their pets' lives, or the lives of animals they've never even met:

During the 2007 pet food recall, the FDA's phone lines were completely overwhelmed. Even veterinarians weren't able to get information that might have saved the lives of their patients. Meanwhile, people bought pet food that had already been recalled because they didn't know better.

If only they'd gone to the Internet they would have found several pet sites and bloggers who were providing updated recall information that was days, and sometimes weeks, ahead of any other source.

Pulitzer-winning reporter Abigail Goldman wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Bloggers and owners of sites such as Itchmo, Pet Connection, Howl 911, The Pet Food List and Pet Food Tracker have been deluged by millions of pet owners who are grieving or railing or both -- and digging for answers. Their online barking is being heard in Washington's halls of power, including the Food and Drug Administration and Capitol Hill."

Goldman was right.In a congressional hearing on April 12, 2007, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) asked why pet websites and bloggers were able to keep up with the information flow, but the FDA couldn't.

Today, they can. In the latest series of recalls of both human and pet foods made with salmonella-tainted peanut products, the FDA launched a Twitter feed and real-time updating blog widgets, all designed to use communications technology to inform consumers about important health issues for people and their pets.

Sometimes they find out about animals whose lives weren't saved... but should have been:

Earlier this year, when 146 dogs were killed in Wilkes County, N.C., after being "saved" from a dog fighting ring, it was only a few hours before Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pitbulls (BADRAP), a rescue group for pit bulls, observed on its blog that the Internet was "on fire" about the killings.

And it was. Hundreds of blogs, forums and e-mail lists began protesting not just the killings themselves, but the Humane Society of the United States' apparent support of those killings despite the fact that none of the dogs, not even the puppies born after the bust, was evaluated for temperament or behavior.

The outrage was such that later that night, the Humane Society agreed to meet with Best Friends Animal Society, the organization giving sanctuary to some of the Vick dogs, and other animal welfare groups to discuss its policy on pit bulls. They also issued a statement that pit bulls seized from fighting situations needed to be evaluated on an individual basis before a decision is made about their future.

I'm sure the pet haters will be out in force in the comments section over at SFGate; beats me why pet haters read a pet column, but they do. So please come by and share your thoughts -- and prove the power of pet bloggers one more time.

Full story here.

A new life for Suzie

Yesterday, Suzie the dog was supposed to be euthanized at the shelter where she had not responded to antibiotics for what seemed to be a bladder infection.

Thanks to Jan, a volunteer at the shelter who decided the little white dog deserved better, she instead had surgery to remove a very large bladder stone that was the actual cause of her symptoms.

And thanks also to a whole lot of you, who in around five hours that day donated all the money Suzie needed to get her surgery.

Jan brought Suzie home from the vet today, and took many photos of her so that everyone who donated can see her progress. I've created a photo album here and will update it as Jan sends more photos.

I spoke to Jan on the phone, and she said, "Yesterday was supposed to be the last day of her life, and instead it's a whole new beginning."

Happy New Year, everyone!

Can you help me help Suzie?

This sweet little 10-pound dog has been in a shelter in Ontario, Canada for a few weeks now. They thought she had a bladder infection and gave her antibiotics, but her symptoms never got better. She strains, dribbles blood, cries, and wets herself constantly. She is matted and soiled, and in tremendous pain, but wasn't groomed or given pain medication.

A volunteer tried to get her better care for more than two weeks, but without luck, so on Christmas Eve she signed her out to foster her. She posted the story to an email list we're both on, asking for advice on supplements or diet to help treat the bladder infection.

As we usually do, the list owner, Lew Olson, and I jumped in with "Canine UTIs 101," probably somewhat overwhelming the poor volunteer. But we also jumped in with practical help, and paid for her to see the vet up in Ontario. I spoke to the vet this morning, who after examining and x-raying Suzie discovered she has a huge stone in her bladder that needs to be removed surgically. Also, her matting is so bad that they were unable to groom her without anesthetizing her.

We have an estimate of around $983 US to have the vet do a full blood panel, remove the stone, spay her if she's unspayed, and groom her. (It will be less if she's already spayed.) We have a forever home for her, and even a backup home.

I've paid her bill so far, and am willing to contribute a bit more, as is Lew. The volunteer is going to contribute some, and so is her mother. But we need to try to raise the rest from the dog lovers we know, and so we're coming to you.

I checked with IMOM.org, a great organization that helps with emergency medical funding for pets. I knew they wouldn't be able to help this particular dog as she falls outside their guidelines, but I thought they could give me some tips on how to raise this  money on my own. They recommended setting up a fundraising page at fundable.com, which allows people to use their credit cards or PayPal accounts to pledge a certain amount of money. If we fail to raise it, then everyone's pledge will be cancelled. Payments are handled by PayPal and are completely safe, and you do not need a PayPal account to pledge.

I know the Web is full of scams, but I have spoken personally to the vet as well as the volunteer, and, well... you all know me. My life is an open book, and this is for real. If you can help, even with ten or twenty dollars, please go to Suzie's fundable.com page and make a pledge. We want to do the surgery no later than Tuesday, as she's in considerable pain (although this kind vet put her on pain meds, unlike the folks at the shelter).

Can you help? Please donate to Suzie's Surgery!

Update: We did it! In fact, we more than did it, and went a couple of hundred dollars over! I'll contact everyone who donated after we hit our goal to see if they want a refund, or for us to use the money for Suzie's other expenses. Thank you so much, everyone... what a wonderful way to start the New Year for this little dog. You're amazing... we raised this money in FOUR HOURS!