The Ark of Hope Rescue

This is beautiful Sara with her infected eyes. You can see the skin between her nose and upper lip is also sore and infected.

Sara was so weak, I had to help her stand up for this picture.

You can see here that some of the sores are starting to dry up. If you look at my hand -- from my knuckle to the end of my little finger is how wide Sara is.

This is Sara, she is a 7 year old, AKC St. Bernard. Her original owners had her for 6 years when they fell into some financial problems after the Dad lost his job. They needed to find Sara a good home someone that would take care of her as well as they did. They thought that they found Sara just the right home. Unfortunately, they were mislead. Approximately 7 months after this new family took Sara, a lady that lived near Sara saw her and realized what bad physical condition she was in went to talk to these people. They told their neighbor that they couldn't afford to take care of Sara, so the neighbor lady asked if she could have her, they gladly turned her over. Before "Kim" left with Sara she noticed a Rottweiler puppy that these people now had in their house! (They couldn't take care of Sara so they went out and bought a Rottie puppy????) Saturday, July 14th, she called the Ark of Hope and the next day we went to see her. Sara was in terrible shape. Both of her eyes and ears were infected. Her skin had open sores and was infected. She was so emaciated, her hip bones, ribs and vertebrae were so pronounced, you could count them. To make matters worse, Sara was in "HEAT." That afternoon we brought Sara to the Ark of Hope. The next morning, July 16, we took her to the vets, she weighed in at 80 pounds. That may seem like a lot but Sara should have weighed at least 150 pounds! Her original owners told me that the last time they had her weighed at their vet's -- their vet's scale only went up to 130 pounds ---she pinned the scale! She is here at the Ark now getting all the help possible, but she is not eating well, and of course she needs to eat to get better. We are feeding her "expensive" can food from the vets, and food/nutrient supplements. We have another vet appointment on Wednesday... 

UPDATE: We had Sara at the vets today. We may have found out the reason for her not eating, weight loss and illness. She has an inter-uterine infection and a growth on one of her ovaries. Poor puppy is in a lot of pain! If her owner would have taken her to the vets when they noticed her weight loss, antibiotics would have done the trick but left untreated now its a life or death situation! We left her at the vets for IV meds to ready her for surgery tomorrow morning, Thursday July 26th. Her vet bill may be in the range of $1,500.00..

UPDATE: Saturday, July 28th, I was able to bring Sara home from the hospital today, she looks great! She is eating, really eating! She is walking around and wagging her tail. She seems a lot stronger and looks happy! Many thanks to Dr. Fox and his staff for taking such great care of Sara!!! She has a long way to go yet, but she's going to make it!!!

UPDATE: Everything was going great with Sara, she was eating 3 times a day, getting her meds and vitamins, going outside only to go pottie and returning inside to rest. Everything was fine at 8:00 PM the last time she went out, 11:00 PM we went to let her outside one last time before she was put to bed, we found blood eveywhere! 11:00 we were calling the vet, the vet tech said to "put a bandage on her and rap it, that she'd be fine until morning!" First thing Monday morning she was back at the vets and in surgery. Some internal stitches came loose and she was bleeding pretty badly. Dr. Fox fixed her up, we brought her home again and once again she is doing wonderfully!!...Just a little bit of stress to remind us that we are not the ones in charge, we are not God and we must thank him daily for the gifts that He gives us, and Sara is such a gift!!!

UPDATE: August 13th. Took Sarah back to the Vets to remove her staples - she has gained 18 pounds in just 18 days!!! That is not including the weight of her uterus and other stuff that they took out of her during surgery. So really she has probably gained a few more then 18 pounds!!! Sarah is doing great, we will be looking for a new home for her real soon - can you help??

UPDATE: November 16, 2007 Sarah has been adopted! Yeah for Sarah!