Winnie 2

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Update 09/26/08:

Winnie continues to impress everyone with her sweet personality and improvement health-wise. She has gained 12 pounds since arriving at her foster home and looks like a totally different dog. Her blood pressure is great with the help of medication. Seeing a vet every 3-4 months will be important for Winnie. The vet will check her blood pressure to be sure the dose of her medication matches her weight gain. Limited blood work may be routine as well to make sure her kidneys are functioning OK. 

On another note, the decision has been made to leave Winnie’s teeth alone. Given her heart condition, dental surgery would be high risk for her. Fortunately, she does not appear to be bothered by her teeth and eats dry dog food and chews on chewies with no problems. The vet recommended a tooth scraper that her foster mom could use to remove some of the tartar buildup. Brushing to freshen Winnie’s breath should help too. 

Winnie has all of the mannerisms of a Springer beyond her 6 years. She is very laid back. She moves around very slowly, possibly due to some arthritis in her back, in the area where a bullet is lodged. This makes her appear to be a bit lame but she gets around fine. She has full run of the house during the day when her family is away and no accidents have been found. She actually is happier this way than when contained in a small area. Winnie does not like to be alone. Her foster mom feels she would do best in a home where someone is in during part of the day or with a family that has a low energy dog who would keep Winnie company while they are gone. 

When greeting people Winnie puts her nose to a hand to say “Pet me.” She does not bark. She is very happy when her foster parents get home from work. That’s when she shows some Springer energy by hopping around the yard. Although this is for short periods, it’s very cute!! She is generally a very low energy gal and really doesn’t play with toys, but she does love her chewies. 

She is learning to take treats “easy.” Winnie is also learning not to jump up at hands in search of food. An assist when going down steps is appreciated so a forever home without too many of them would be to her liking. At night Winnie sleeps on the floor in the bedroom with the rest of her family. 

This is a very, very sweet girl. She follows you around, literally everywhere you go. She loves to put her head on your lap when you’re seated…anywhere!! If she does venture farther away which is very rare, she will respond if you just clap your hands. What a trusting treasure this one has turned into. She’s ready to put her nose into new hands – wouldn’t you love to have her reaching out to touch you?!?!?

Update 08/28/08:

With good veterinary care and a very attentive foster family, Winnie is showing remarkable improvement. Her foster mom can’t believe how far this little gal has come. A neighbor visited recently and couldn’t believe she was the same dog. Winnie went for another blood pressure check and it was good!!!! In four weeks she will be checked again to make sure her medication dosage keeps up with her weight gain. The vet is unsure about what he wants to do with an abscessed tooth as traditional treatment would mean a major surgery for Winnie. Fortunately, there is time before that decision has to be made.

Winnie is definitely hearing and sight-impaired. She does hear enough though to come to you when you clap your hands. She needs help when going down stairs since she seems to like to skip the last few at the bottom. For now, her foster mom just holds her collar and walks Winnie down. She feels Winnie would probably do best in a home with another dog so that she can follow his/her lead.

Older kids rather than little tikes fair better with Winnie, at least ones that are tall enough to have their food high enough to be out of Winnie’s reach. The two-year-old in her foster home is definitely too short. He calls Winnie Miss Kinnie and told her recently that she wasn’t allowed to have his bologna sandwich. Wow – the foster mom wishes she had that conversation on video. It was priceless!!! Of course, Winnie couldn’t hear the little boy and took the sandwich anyway. The six-year-old is tall enough and hasn’t had any issues with Winnie stealing his food. More on Miss Winnie to come…

Update 07/30/08:

Things are going pretty well for Winnie as she is being nursed back to health in her foster home. She just finished up her antibiotic treatment for the Lyme disease. Also, she’s gained eight pounds since she has come into foster care and she looks great! 

Winnie gets very excited when her foster parents come home from work, lifting her front paws off the ground almost like she’s trying to jump up to greet you but can’t. Her spurts of energy are more frequent now. When her foster mom arrived home the other day, she thought it was one of her resident dogs that came barreling around to the front of the house, but it was Winnie!!

Winnie’s vet is still having a tough time getting her blood pressure in check, though. The vet is adjusting the dosage of her blood pressure medication, and he is monitoring it closely. Until her blood pressure is more manageable, the vet does not want to do any dental work on her teeth. Even when Winnie gets back up to snuff, she is going to need a special home because she is definitely sight and hearing-impaired. She cannot see very well up close, but appears that she can see at a distance. She always needs to be close to her people. She will follow the other dogs, but if they go too far away from her foster parents, she comes trotting right back. She jumps for treats because she can’t see you handing them to her. Her foster parents are working on that though. She will not even acknowledge that you are calling her although she seems to respond sometimes when you clap your hands. 

This little girl has been through quite a life until she was rescued by MAESSR. The vet who is treating her now did a second x-ray for her heart murmur because he saw something odd on the original one. She has a bullet in her abdomen! It is not affecting anything and is close to her intestines so they will leave it there. One would think that Winnie would not trust any human, but that is not the case. With everyone she meets, she greets them with a little nudge as if to say, “Hey, why aren’t you petting me?” When they start petting her, she leans up against them as if to say, “Don’t stop” She will let you do anything you want to her. When her foster mom combs her, she could care less. The vets have been doing all sorts of things to her over the course of the past month and there has not been one peep out of her. Good girl, Winnie!

Although she is very laid back most of the time, Winnie is curious about the trash can now that she’s feeling better; however, her back end is still lame and she can’t get up on her hind legs to get into it. She is definitely crate-trained, but is not fond of going in there. Her cagey foster parents trick her by throwing her treat in and she goes right in after it! She is housetrained although she doesn’t like the laundry room for some reason; Winnie urinates in the laundry room if her foster parents pen her in there.

Watch for more updates as Winnie regains her health.

Original:

When Winnie came from a Pennsylvania shelter to her MAESSR foster home, she was a very sick, weak little girl who was extremely matted from head to toe. She was a little trooper as her foster parents worked for four hours to shave her matting out. The poor thing could not even stand up to get a bath. Her foster parents cleaned away foul looking mucus that encrusted her eyes and nose, and Winnie was coughing and sneezing. 

Winnie weighed in at the vet the next morning at an emaciated 26 pounds. She was so weak that she could barely walk or even hold her head up. Blood work showed that Winnie was positive for Lyme Disease. She was running a fever and the vet said she had some infected teeth. A heart murmur was detected and a chest x-ray was done revealing fluid accumulating in her chest. Drugs were prescribed for her upper respiratory infection and Lyme Disease and she is awaiting an EKG. She does have a growth on her right eye, but it doesn’t appear to bother her. She has a scar on her right cornea which affects her sight. Her hearing could not be properly assessed due to her initial sickly condition. 

“A little consideration, a little thought for others, makes all the difference.” Winnie the Pooh

If our Winnie could talk, she would second her namesake’s words. The love and attention and nursing of Winnie’s devoted foster parents have begun to turn her life around. Within days of beginning her medical treatments, Winnie no longer needed her foster parents to help her up to go outside. When her foster mom got home from work, Winnie was waiting for her to let her out of her room! She went outside with the resident dogs and decided that she was going to trot (all but run) after them. It was the cutest thing!!!! 

A re-check at the vet shows that she has gained a pound! Her eyes and nose look 100 times better and she is a bit livelier. Also, her face is no longer swollen where her tooth is abscessed. The vet is pleased that she is improving and getting stronger every day. She is also eating and drinking well. The EKG is scheduled so there will be more insight about Winnie’s health once those results are back. 

Winnie really doesn’t respond to any commands at this point. She is great with both the two-legged and four-legged kids that comprise her foster family and she could care less about the cat. She loves to drink out of the toilet, but her family put the kibosh to that! In typical Springer fashion, she loves attention. She follows her foster mom around the yard until she sees the other dogs; then, she trots after them. After she checks them out, she comes back to her mom. Winnie goes up and down the steps without a problem. She appears to be housetrained. The few accidents she had in her initial days in foster care were probably due to her being so ill; she had no idea where she was, inside or outside.

Winnie is a real sweetheart! Please watch for updates on how her health is progressing.