Milly... In early November we got a call from a Good Samaritan in Waco. A rescue group there had taken in an older blonde Golden found wandering stray, but they didn’t really have room for her. They put her at about seven years old, noted that she was good with kids, and sent a Halloween photo of a sweet-looking white-faced girl nattily attired in a kerchief and posing with a pumpkin.

A week or so later, “Milly” arrived in Austin. Temperament – super! Exactly as advertised. Wonderful with kids, wonderful with adults, wonderful with other dogs. Age – more like ten than seven. But healthwise, the poor girl was a mess. It was obvious she had been living rough for a long time.

The good news – she’s heartworm negative and already spayed! On the “needs help” list: she’s at least twenty pounds overweight, and her coat is harsh and scanty – both due to an underactive thyroid. She had a terrible bladder infection and was in so much discomfort from it that she trembled from head to foot and could hardly stand still. She has a big cyst on her back, ugly but harmless – we can easily remove it. There are lots of lipomas (fatty tumors) on her chest. More troubling, though, are the huge mammary tumors on her belly, which we hadn’t been able to see in her photos: one grapefruit-sized, the others egg-sized. We won’t know if they’re cancerous or not until they’re removed, but early indications are that they may just be enormous lipomas. We are keeping our fingers crossed!

When she arrived in care, Milly seemed terrified of coming indoors and had to be dragged over the threshold. Had she been scolded so severely for wanting to come inside in her former life that she was sure she’d be punished even for trying? We really don’t know.

Milly has been on medications for a couple of weeks and is doing much better. The infection is almost cured, and her foster mom reports that Miss Milly feels well enough to play fetch, caper around the yard, and do the “happy dance” before meals and when her people come home. And she’s now very comfortable living inside, though she still won’t cross the threshold into the bedrooms!

The plan of action – Milly needs to lose some weight and get healthier before her surgery. Once she’s on the mend, we’ll take off the tumors and the cyst, give her very dirty teeth a much-needed clean – and she’ll look and feel like a new girl and be ready for her forever home.

Please help give Milly a great start on a new life! We estimate the cost for check-ups, shots, bloodwork, antibiotic therapy, and surgery at $1,000.00.

January 6, 2006:

We thank everyone that has contributed to Milly's fund.  We raised enough money to pay for her surgery. 

If you can help with our Extra-Ordinary Golden Fund, we can provide extra care to the dogs that need some extra funds.  Please consider making a donation.

March 27, 2006:

Fourteen-year-old Milly (yes, her age has been revised upwards once again) was our Extraordinary Golden Fund poster girl in December, and the response was overwhelming: so many of you contributed to the EGF to help Milly get healthy! Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts—and here’s the latest on how this old girl is doing.

First, thanks to thyroid meds and a better diet, she’s shed a whopping 15 pounds and is looking much slimmer. She still has another ten or so to go, but she’s headed in the right direction. Second, though she’s had a few more bouts of bad bladder infections (apparently there’s something in the way she’s built that predisposes her to this trouble), daily cranberry capsules and a monthly urinalysis (to get a jump on treatment at the first sign of trouble) seem to have that problem under control at last.

Unfortunately, though, Miss Milly won’t be having the surgery we had hoped for. Her foster mom had noticed that, even as Milly got over her infections and began to drop the excess pounds, her energy level and appetite kept coming and going. Some days she’d be perky and playful, romping with the kids and enjoying her meals; others she’d be droopy, reluctant to get up, uninterested in food, and not even willing to take a drink of water. This was pretty troubling, so it was back to the vet for a very thorough check-up.

What the vet found wasn’t the best of news. The big tumor on her belly is, as we had hoped, just a lipoma—but something else had begun to grow beneath it, as a hard mass could be felt internally. Over the next several weeks, the new tumor enlarged noticeably. Our GRR vets have consulted and decided it’s likely a “mixed mammary tumor,” deep inside and attached internally along the femoral artery, nerves, and muscles. It’s inoperable and quite likely cancerous. The explanation of Milly’s up days and down days may be due to the positioning of the tumor; if it’s pushing on a nerve or pressing against something or caught on something on a particular day, Milly will be pretty uncomfortable. Then it shifts, and she’s back to smiling, feeling happy, and getting around easily.

Our best guess is that she has about six months or so to go, and her foster family is just going to watch her closely and let us know when she starts to have more bad days than good. For now, Milly seems to be enjoying her life; she has a spunky attitude and a chipper personality, and her foster mom and dad are happy to have her with them as long as she has left.

The funds all of you have so generously donated will be used for Milly’s continuing care—and to help other dogs in need. And there are plenty of those already this year! Of the 35 dogs who have arrrived in care in 2006, we have several with heartworms, several needing X-rays for joint problems, one who took a trip to the specialty vet for a cardiac ultrasound after a routine vet visit uncovered a heart murmur, one who is recovering from a dog attack, one who required surgery for a pelvis badly broken in a traffic accident (tragically, she did not survive her ordeal), another who needs dentistry for badly broken teeth… and the list will go on. But thanks to you, we will keep on doing our very best to make every dog who arrives in our care healthy, happy, carefree, and—finally—the “best dog in the world” for some loving family out there.

Thank you again for all you do!