Click here to see more recent pictures.
This all started when a
dog chased a cat under the house of a Lafayette Parish
resident, and sadly killed the cat. After that, life was
hell for that dog: Her collar got caught in a pipe and
there she was, unable to leave FOR 10
DAYS!!!! The homeowner told us the
Lafayette Parish Animal Control went out to her home but
said the pole they had was not long enough to reach the dog.
Another call was placed later in the week with LPAC but they
did NOT return to the home. Numerous requests for help by
the homeowner fell on deaf ears...
Agency after agency denied
assistance to the homeowner to aid in the rescue of this
poor animal. Ten days passed while she
stayed hooked by her collar to a broken water pipe
underneath this house without food, soaking in leaking water
and in her own waste.
This poor dog finally got help when a call was made to
Wild
Cat Foundation,
who contacted us for support. One of Wild
Cat Foundation's
volunteers immediately drove to the address, crawled under
the house and what Lafayette Parish Animal Control could not
do - or would not do - this volunteer accomplished in about
5 minutes. No pole... no procrastination... no "let me call
so and so..." When the St. Martin Humane Society's
volunteers arrived to offer some assistance, the dog was
already free from that miserable situation.
Was it that
difficult?
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Why didn't Lafayette
Parish Animal Control on the first visit attempt to release
the dog's collar from the broken pipe? |
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We have to spray her off to
see her better. She can hardly stand and walk even less. Notice the
arched up back. And the tail... the end of it has necrosis.
Yes... this is her
tail
We volunteer to foster this
dog and we transport her immediately to a vet, Dr. Fontenot in
Opelousas, on Friday afternoon. She has numerous wounds, she is
anemic, but the
big
urgent problem is a 3 1/2" by 8" impaction, the reason of
her arched back. She may need to be sedated to get some relief, and
the long term consequences on her intestinal tract are unknown.
Luckily, Dr. Fontenot manages to help her without sedation. During
her first night, she chews her tail off.
She was also diagnosed with heartworms, a serious ailment which will
be addressed later.
She is released back in our care on Monday.
We name her Jaime, after the Wild
Cat Foundation volunteer
who freed her.
07/02/07: Jaime is quite
thin. She has a huge chest where her ribs are showing, and a tiny
waist. She also has chewed her tail off.
Jaime has a hard time
standing and walking. She is very unstable and she walks with very
small steps and like a crab... sideways, with her head and tail
pointing to the right while the rest of her body points to the left.
Part of it is probably because her tendons and muscles stiffened up
from staying in the same position for ten days. The other reason
is the wounds she has on her feet and legs.
Jaime is now in a foster home where she is recovering.
07/02/07: Look at these pictures.
A happy ending,
right? Jaime
has food, water, shelter, vet care, love...
Look again...
What's wrong
with these
pictures?
Look at her ears, how straight they are now, look at the face,
with the same expression on every picture. Look at her features, how
she looks like she had a face lift...
07/09/07. Her wounds are healing nicely and even though she
still walks with great difficulty, her body is almost straight when
she walks. But she has a very strange way of eating: She has a
hard time grabbing food from her bowl and she sucks the food down her
throat rather than chew it and swallow it... we started hand feeding
her soft food. Maybe she has a yeast infection in her mouth, or her
jaw is broken... We take Jaime back to Dr. Fontenot and it does not
take him long to give us the diagnosis...
Click
here for more info on tetanus, also called "lock
jaw"
07/11/07: Jaime is
doing better. She is on antibiotics and a muscle relaxant. We see
small progresses that mean a lot: even though her face is still very
rigid, she now occasionally blinks her eyes, sometimes
she licks her nose, she opens her mouth a little bit more when
we hand feed her (very soft food, in small quantities, every 90
minutes or so.) Details which really tell us a lot! She is still
VERY stiff and it may take up to four weeks for the toxins to be
completely gone, but we think she is one of the lucky ones, a
survivor of tetanus!
Jaime has fully
recovered from tetanus but she still has some health issues.
Click here to see
"after tetanus"
pictures.
You can help us help Jaime by donating towards her care. Thank
you!
Return to Jaime's Petfinder page
