Brody

Hi Cares4pets,

Here is Brody, aka Brownie, that I adopted in February 2010. He has changed quite a bit since then. He is the unofficial mayor of Phoenixville! Everyone stops us and tells him how handsome he is : ). I try not to let it all go to his head, but he is the sweetest dog and deserves all the love and attention he receives. Thank you for all the great work you do.

Sincerely,
Mink MacArthur

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Bald Dogs Aren't Old Dogs: Carter's Story

On our last trip to ACCT (Philadelphia Animal Control), we walked past a cage with a little, mostly hairless pit bull puppy in it. Despite the fact that was mostly bald, pretty smelly, and super painful and itchy, Carter sat there and wagged his tail emphatically at us. Although we weren't looking for a puppy that day, we just couldn't pass him by.

Carter has a condition called demodectic mange. It's really pretty common in shelter situations, but it's usually a death sentence for the animal, even though it's not contagious and easily treated. Why? Because no one wants to adopt a bald dog, and because the word "mange" has so many negative connotation. Not to mention complete treatment takes a few months, months that shelters don't usually have.

Demodectic mange is caused by a tiny mite (demodex canis) that lives in hair follicles. All normal animals have a small number of these mites hanging around in their skin, and it's only when animals get stressed or immune-compromised that these little mites multiply and cause disease. The overgrowth of mites can cause anything from minor patchy baldness that resolves on its own to severe generalized hair loss and skin infection. This type of mange is very common in puppies who have poor nutrition, care or breeding, so we often see demodex puppies get dropped off at city shelters. Once there, they are really lucky if they ever make it back out again.

The good news is that the mites are not contagious to other animals or people and can be treated inexpensively. While it takes a lot longer to resolve in a shelter (where the animal takes up much needed room), in foster care these dogs usually recover completely and do not have long term effects from the mites. When we pass one of these guys in the shelter and have the room for them, we always jump at the chance to help an otherwise perfectly adoptable dog.

Carter is one of the most severely affected dogs we've taken in a while, but is also one of the sweetest. When he's healed, he will be a gorgeous black dog with white patches, but for now he's kind of dingy grey and pink. His mange covers almost 100% of his body, and he has very little hair, plus, he's greasy to the touch and a little smelly. He also has a severe skin infection being treated with antibiotics. This is common in demodex puppies because they are so itchy all the time; they scratch their skin open and then get a bacterial infection. But in every other way he's a normal puppy. He LOVES playing with other dogs, and he's learning basic obedience, housebreaking and how to play with toys. He's about 4 months old now and will be ready for adoption soon! Carter doesn't need to grow all his hair back to be adopted; he'll come with his medication so his adoptive family can watch him turn into a handsome black dog in their home!

Bella's story continued

Our family adopted Bella after finding her on Petfinder.com. Her story is nothing short of sad and amazing. This little girl had been through so much in her young life but through her tragedy came something wonderful. She is a very happy, playful, loving young girl who has brought so much joy and happiness to our family. Adopting her was the most wonderful experience and the people with Cares4pets were really wonderful throughout the adoption process. At first Bella seemed a bit distance with the family and out other dog Duke. It took her sometime to settle in and realize that this was her forever home and that we all loved her and would always take care of her. Bella and Duke also had a rocky beginning but now have become best buds! I know Duke enjoys having a playmate although she is full of energy and tires him out quickly. We love her and feel blessed to have her here with our family. Thanks so much Cares4pets for saving Bella's life and allowing her to become part of
our family!

Jane's Day at the Beach

Poor Jane has been with us too long... Jane is a very sweet 8 year old mixed breed dog. She is great with "her" people, but not good with other animals and is petrified of children. We took Jane on when her owners had a baby; although Jane was ok with the infant, once he started moving on his own, it was simply too much for her. Finding a home for an older lady that can't live with other animals is a huge challenge, and unfortunately for Jane it just hasn't happened yet. While we still hope to be able to find her a forever home, we also try to make sure that she has as good a life as possible while in our care.


Although Jane grew up in Florida, she hasn't seen the water since coming to us. We decided to take her to the beach for a day to see how she liked it. Lo and behold, Jane LOVES the water. We had almost as much fun as she did running up and down the beach, investigating the horseshoe crabs, and and swimming in the waves. We thought we'd share some of the pictures and movies from Jane's day of fun with you!

Getting her toes wet...

Happy dog :)

Swimming!!!

Shake it off...

Standoff with a horseshoe crab...


A movie of Jane's Day...

Always Plan for Surprises- Chella's Story

In rescue, we like to pretend that we have some control over what we're doing. We very specifically pick out animals from shelters and vet clinics to fill open spots we have in our foster care program. If one of our foster homes needs a dog that is good with kids and cats, then we do our best to find them a dog that will fit into their home. We are frequently reminded, however, that animals don't often play by our rules. A dog that is good with other dogs in a shelter may not be able to live with them, for example. We build our rescue by making contingency plan after contingency plan, making plans like, "If this dog can do this, then we'll put him here, and if he can't, then he'll go here instead..." Although, as you can imagine, all of our contingency plans frequently go out the window and we're left scrabbling for a foster home at the last minute... Welcome to animal rescue, because no matter how hard you try, you WILL be surprised, and you will have to run around like a chicken with it's head cut off on a fairly regular basis to make sure that all the animals are happy and housed all the time.

Chella is a dog that exemplifies the "you will never be able to plan for everything" law of rescue. Chella actually was turned over to another rescue group that we work closely with a few weeks ago. At the time that she was turned in, her surrendering owner reported her as being a spayed female dog, a few years old, housetrained, sweet, etc. She immediately went into a foster home where she was doing really well.

Surprise, surprise, a week ago Chella had puppies! Since the owner had reported her as being spayed, our rescue friends had not bothered to check. Imagine their surprise when they opened up Chella's crate one morning to find puppies in it! Sadly, because they had not known she was pregnant, no one was there when she had her puppies, and one of them was dead when they found them. The other two, however, were beautiful, healthy babies.




Chella's rescue group had not been counting on taking care of a mama with puppies, and they didn't have a good option for her that could care for the three of them. So they asked us if we might be game to take her on, and lucky for Chella, we had a foster home opening up that was more than excited to take on the pups! Chella went to her new foster home this week, where she is set up in a room of her own with her little ones. She's taking great care of them and is warming up to her new foster mom and dad. In a few weeks, we'll have all three of them up online for adoption, but for now, Chella's only job is to take care of her pups!

Our six Maine Coons: Part Three (Finishing Treatment)

We've been so thankful for all the financial support we've received to help us pay for these kitties as they recover from their myriad of diseases. Thanks to individual donors (one anonymous donor gave $300) and our successful happy hour at TABU, a Philadelphia bar (where we raised over $200), we have only had to dip into rescue funds a little bit. If you attended our happy hour or made a donation, of of these kitties thank you very much!

In the past two weeks, we've been focusing on medicating them for Tritrichomonas foetus, the protozoan parasite causing their diarrhea. Although some of the cats came to us without diarrhea, we decided to treat them all at the same time in order to decrease the chances of reinfection.

Trichomonas is a really tough organism to kill. It's found in a lot of catteries around the world, and generally causes severe diarrhea that is often self-limiting (it lasts from a few months to a few years, then clears up). However, these infected cats still are infected and can pass the organism on to the other animals through their feces. These cats also can have bouts of diarrhea throughout the rest of their lives, especially if stressed. Until recently, there was no known drug that reliably killed this parasite. Luckily, a few years ago, ronidazole was found to work! It has been shown that a two week course of ronidazole kills these parasites. Unfortunately, a very small percentage of cats don't respond to the treatment, for whatever reason, and continue to have problems. This drug can also be pretty nasty to the cats and can cause neurologic effects that luckily go away once you remove the drug.

Because of all of this, all of our cats were treated with ronidazole at the same time (Guava started a few days later than the rest since she was so sick with her cold), and they finished their two week treatment this weekend! Because the ronidazole seemed to actually cause the cats to have more diarrhea, now that they are finished with treatment, we're giving them a few days to get back to normal.

For kitties like Kiwi, the 7 month old male kitten, that should be it! Kiwi came to us without ringworm lesions, an upper respiratory infection that has since cleared, and other than that was perfectly healthy. Assuming his diarrhea clears as expected, he'll be ready to go to home in the next week or two! We are still looking for a home for him, so please let us know if you're interested!


The next two ladies up will be Persimmon and Coconuts. Both of these ladies have nasty ear infections that just aren't clearing up on their own, so now that we aren't stuffing pills down their throats every day, we're dumping ear meds into their ears... These ladies are not happy about it! But it's (in a way) rewarding to see how much more difficult it is to medicate them than it was when they first came to us too weak to fight! These ladies should be up for adoption pretty soon, as we don't expect them to take to long on the ear meds!


Poor Guava and Fig are the slowest in the bunch, so will take a little more time. Guava still has a raging upper respiratory infection, so she isn't going anywhere until she feels better. And since she started her ronidazole a few days late, she still has some treatment time to go there as well.



Fig, on the other hand, is probably feeling better than he has in a long time, but that's only because he looked so bad when we got him! He has come such a long way and has developed quite the personality, but he still isn't quite right. Although he's put on a lot of weight, we'd still like to see him put on some muscle mass and look a little less unkept. For now, we'll just give him some more time to recover and see where that gets us. If he's still looking shabby in a few weeks, it will be time to run a few more tests to see if there is anything going on that we might have missed.


And finally, Miss Papaya... Papaya thankfully has completed her course of antibiotics in her crate (by eating them in pill pockets). She's looking and feeling much better, but still showing all signs of just being a feral cat that has no interest in people whatsoever. We're going to give her a little more time to see if she comes around, and if not, we're hopefully going to put her in an indoor feral cat colony so she can live out the rest of her life healthy and happy...