Puppy's Back Crushed, Vet Says To End Life. Rescuer Refuses, Gets Miracle When Pup Completely Recovers
The pup was small, only 10 weeks old. She was old enough to be weaned, but she was clearly unwanted.
She’d been abandoned, left in a box on the beach with some food in a too-small attempt at kindness from her former owners. That wasn’t her biggest issue, though.
The biggest issue was that she could not walk. She kept lying on her stomach, her legs splayed out in four different directions.
When a kind stranger spotted her and brought her into the shelter, staff was told that her back was crushed. Despite her puppy joy, she was suffering from flattened organs and it wasn’t clear just what was wrong with her.
On the brink of putting her to sleep, they decided to get another opinion and took the wiggly pup to a specialist. The vet recognized the symptoms and diagnosed the shepherd puppy with Swimmer’s syndrome.
Swimmer’s is a condition that can be treated, but it would take months of physical therapy for the pup — appropriately named Starfish — before she would be able to walk again.
Fortunately she had a team of caring people around her, including the family in San Francisco that decided to adopt her.
“She had all these other people around her,” said owner Leigh Anne Gray, “the animal shelter folks who wanted to get her over to the rehab clinic, and those people knew what they were doing!”
“She responded to everything that they taught her, because she wanted it so bad.”
Physical therapist teams worked with her to stretch her muscles, exercise her legs, and train her legs to be under her rather than at her side. Starfish had plenty of puppy energy and enthusiasm and made a great recovery.
“All we had to do was to get her feet up underneath her,” said Gray. “And as soon as we got her onto the grass, and she had a little something to hold onto, she’d just — she’d follow us anywhere.”
Gray wrote that “In decades of practice, our vets have never seen the transformation of a dog like what Starfish would show us over the next two months of physical therapy.”
Since her rousing success, Starfish has encountered a bit of a setback. Shepherds are notorious for having hip problems, and because of her condition, Starfish’s hips are already in very sad shape.
Gray started a GoFundMe for their beloved dog, and had to break the disappointing news. “She’s had almost six active months on her feet and we’ve just read her Xrays again: she has extremely severe hip dysplasia.”
Each surgery that the young dog needs will cost $5,000. The Grays are hoping to raise that by sharing their little fighter’s story.
Hopefully Starfish will be able to get the life-changing operations she needs that will allow her to live out her doggy days pain-free and with plenty of walks.
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