Adopted

Darla

True to her name, this young girl is a darling. Somebody dropped her off in front of the San Antonio shelter with a fish hook lodged in her neck. It had apparently been there a while, as the wound was abscessed, huge, and badly infected. Nonetheless, Darla greeted the arriving staff with smiles and tail wags. One look at her, and they called GRR: “Can you take her today?” We did, and she headed to the vet pronto for surgery to clean and drain the wound (and have her spay at the same time). Unfortunately, she was found to be HW positive. Right now (August 23) she’s still at the vet, but she’ll soon be going home to her foster family. She is an absolute favorite with the entire clinic staff! Her doctor says, “I want to make sure she’s all healed up before we start HW treatment. I'm also trying to get some weight on her. I need her to be really strong/stable when we start the HW treatment, so her body can handle the dying worms. I imagine this will take about three weeks; a little longer than for most abscesses because this one was so big and deep. She's really sweet and looks for human attention all day.”

Update 10/25/06:

Darla took a few weeks longer to get over her neck wound than we expected—she needed a second surgery to clear the infection out for good—but she was finally discharged from the clinic on Sept. 19th and headed for her foster home in Austin, where she is having a blast… and her foster mom and dad are really enjoying having a young Golden around again. (Her doggie foster brother and sister, ages 11 and 12, aren’t so sure THEY like having a pesky puppy in the house, but they’re slowly warming up.) Darla loves toys and likes to stockpile them in her crate. She is hardly ever seen without a plushie in her mouth! She ignores our grumpy cat and is totally trustworthy in the house, to the point that we are already leaving her loose when we aren’t home. She does have those puppy frenzy sessions a few times a day… this afternoon we heard a CLUNK and a BOING!! and ran out to the living room – seems Miss Darla had leaped into the swivel rocker, which briskly twirled around and knocked over a stand lamp! Of course by the time we reached the crime scene all that could be seen of the perp was a golden tail disappearing around the corner. She sleeps right through the night at the foot of the bed in our bedroom. She is off to the vet for a check-up this week and then we’ll decide how to proceed with her HW treatment. (And by the way, it looks like she has already found her forever home—right where she is!)