Great Gabby

Great Gabby at the vet

11/1/13:  Great News!  Gabby has found her forever home!  More details to come.  Congratulations Gabby!!

Will you be the home or foster for this “One-in-a-Million” dogs?  Great Gabby is from the Dexter area needs a GREAT GATSBY kind of family to love forever or to help foster her, probably a long term foster situation.  She got out and was hit by a school bus, fracturing her pelvis Monday morning, 9/9/13. Great Gabby is a LOVELY dog and really stole our hearts, as well as the whole vet office.  Her radiographs look so very painful…  She is amazing.

We had two former Project dogs with very similar injuries.  Both are up and running, although not with a smooth gait.  The dogs are happy and otherwise healthy, and both are great with strangers and their children.

It takes a special dog to tolerate what Great Gabby is experiencing and still not showing any anger with her pain when set up for her radiographs this morning or carried by me, a stranger and moved around in the pickup truck on the way to the vet office.   Most dogs would have had words with me, showing teeth or crying from the pain or fear.

Great Gabby was calm, panted after her radiographs, but until then, did not pant showing no stress.

Her mother is a purebred Boxer; dad a Lab from her mom’s neighborhood.

Great Gabby’s story:

Shayna, from the Dexter area, found an ad on a FB website hosted in the area for free puppies.  She picked the smallest female red pup but this beautiful pup also caught her eye and so she took a photo of the pups together.  This is how she came to ID Gabby through all her new homes in the following months.

A few months later she saw Gabby on the same FB site and for sale for $20.  The new owner did not want a pup after all, seems it was an emotional free for the taking as so many times happens. Gabby was purchased by a third home.

Shayna frequents that FB site that sells and trades items.  Sometime later another picture of Gabby was posted.  The home who had paid for Gabby now wanted to give her away with a shock collar, crate, bed, bowls, etc.   So Gabby ended up in another home.  The sick fact about this last home: they apparently took the dog to get the free expensive extras that came with her.  They dumped Gabby.  

As odds would have it, Gabby was dumped close to where her sister was living with Shayna.  When Shayna saw her as a stray she took her in and her dad, who did not have a dog, decided to take her until a home could be found that would appreciate her.  That was when we got the first call.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013, I was supposed to pick up Gabby with another small little stray Dachshund and Beagle mix that was in heat.  However, Shayna’s dad had fallen in love with Gabby.  He had decided to try and keep her.  He is a Christian man who makes only $8 an hour and is working on his college degree after work.  I agreed to help him and his daughter with a spay voucher to have both dogs spayed the week of September 16.

September 9th forever changed the course for Gabby.  She got out of the house and ran to the school bus, getting hit.  A neighbor witnessed it happen and saw Gabby crawl off the road towards her home, dragging her hind quarters: shocked and in pain.

From the first that Shayna’s father saw Gabby after work, Gabby’s tail did not stop wagging.  She so loved him and with all this pain, still showed how much she cared for the family that cared for her.

I am a firm believer in quality of life.  Dr. Colleen believes that GREAT GABBY will have a quality of life, and a big part of that is the attitude of this special girl.  We need a strong foster willing to help heal her and, who knows? Maybe they will fall in love to the point they want to adopt her.

She will require assistance to go outside to potty, meaning a sling around her waist while being lead out to the grass: possibly needing two people.  She is leash trained so I think a child could lead while mom or dad support her hind legs.  She needs as much bed rest as possible for the injuries to heal, secure rugs on the floor that lead to the door.  She needs the best quality food we/you can provide, Dinovite supplement to help her body heal, weekly B-12 shots to help heal her nervous system and assist with healing, she probably needs Nutramax® Cosequin for her cartilage to heal.  She needs pain killers. We want her to have every opportunity to have a good quality of life.  We can’t skimp in the healing stage of her recovery.

We are asking for donations to help with her vetting and will hopefully have enough donated towards her care that we can either adopt her at a low fee or for free.

We are depending on your support to continue helping dogs like Great Gabby.

We can’t do it alone.

If there is a lesson here, it starts with spaying so that unwanted pets need not be advertized as free and taken by homes who are not screened for a history of commitment.  Especially when you offer the dog with a bunch of goodies: take the goodies and dump the dog…???

Thank you and please cross post far and wide.  Great Gabby needs a Great Gatsby!  Is that YOU?