One Experience from 2013
Tuesday 11th of March 2014
This is Lasagne. In December 2012, Lasagne was one of eight little dogs surrendered by a farmer from Central South Australia. Lasagne was the only pure Chihuahua. We received the phone call: "I have eight Chihuahuas that we cannot keep." That is fine, we can take them for you.
All very well until they walked in the door. What a motley crew! We knew immediately that we could not take in all these dogs. One Chihuahua, one Tibetan Spaniel, one Tibby cross Chi, one Shihtzu, one Maltese cross Shihtzu cross Chihuahua, one Tibby cross Shihtzu, one tiny little thing that looks like a Chinese Crested Hairless, and one other small dog of goodness knows what breed!
One of our friends took in the three big dogs for us and we did a lot of rearranging of dogs to accommodate the rest. Thank goodness for Beach Street Vet who rushed them all through the processes of fully immunising, desexing and microchipping all of them! They had come from remote country South Australia and never seen a vet. However, these poor farmers had lost everything caused by long term drought. They had packed up their car and headed for Melbourne where they were hoping to find work. At least they brought all their dogs with them. They told us they could not find anywhere to rent with all these dogs hence they were surrendering them to us.
The following morning we received a phone call from a vet in the northern suburbs asking if we had the dogs. "Yes we do, why?" "Thank goodness, they are safe" he said. "These people have just left our surgery after leaving us with forty cats, so I was worried about the dogs!"
Every one of these dogs has a beautiful personality as they have been very well loved and played with by the family. However they had never seen a vet so had never received appropriate medical treatment, and a whole range of problems were caused by indiscriminate mixed breeding. The dogs were all riddled with worms and fleas, so the minute they arrived we gave all of the dogs flea treatment and a whole worm tablet each. On advice from the vet we gave them all a second worm treatment a week later, followed by a third treatment a month after that just before they left our care to go to their new homes.
It took us a month having all their problems sorted out and finding seven of them a good home.
One dear lady adopted the little Maltese cross Shihtzu cross Chihuahua. That little dog has life-long medical problems with her back and discs and will not live a long life. She is on monthly injections and medication for her back problems. We had thought that euthanasia might have been a better option for this poor little dog, but she has the most loving inoffensive disposition you could ever ask for in a little dog and her new Mummy loves her to distraction!
The eighth tiny mite is the Chinese Hairless Crested cross Chihuahua called Angel. Angel has so many medical problems that we may never place her. We suspect bad feeding as a puppy along with the mixed breeding has caused her problems, but despite all this, she is an absolute delight!
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