Friday, February 22, 2008

Update on Ethel - 02/22/2008 :-(

Ethel is the little senior female JRT. Well her blood work was fine as far as her liver, heart, white and red blood cell count... BUT she is heart worm positive. I am not sure what I am going to do. She is in pretty bad shape. It was $15 to pull her from the shelter, $100 to get the blood work done, it will be $60 for shots, $100 for spay, $200 for teeth cleaning and now $200 for heartworm treatment. You can't do anything she needs until the heartworm treatment is complete and that takes 2 or 3 months and then you have to wait 3 months to make sure the heart worm is gone to spay her or clean her teeth. There is a huge risk she will not make it through the heart worm treatment. HW treatment is very very very painful and very very hard on a dogs heart..... ugh! If she does make it through the HW treatment there is no telling if she will making it through the spay surgery and teeth cleaning surgery b/c the HW treatment will make her heart weak.

I know what I should do but it is just a crappy call. $700 into a 10 year old dog that I will have in rescue for at least 6 months... will anyone even adopt her? She will probably have no teeth by the time I wait 6 months to get them cleaned... it won't be a cleaning it will be a total removal of the 5 teeth she has left.

Her adoption fee will be $200 so that is $500 I will have to eat. How many dogs can be saved with $500? I already had to turn down a dog that is probably dead b/c I got Fred and Ethel in and they were such a mess I wasn't sure what medical treatment they were going to need.... I am not sure the dog was killed but I am too chicken to check the website.

This my friends is why rescue is difficult. You have to logically think out what is best for everyone... the dog, you, other dogs in need, possible homes, your other foster dogs, your own dogs....

I hate days like this.

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