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Help Maisie get back on her feet

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Meet Maisie, the super sweet stray that I found on the side of the road that the vets believe was either hit by a car, thrown from a car or had some sort of rough trauma (beaten). I am asking for help with her medical bills, having two dogs, two cats, a bird and other farm animals I was not planning on or budgeting for another dog and the wallet has taken a decent hit. I am doing all that I can for her. Any help that you can give is greatly appreciated and will be used 100% to cover her medical bills. If you would like to read her full story please continue below (its a bit long), for those that do wish to read the full story or don't have the current time to do so; this is what I have currently spent on her and the breakdown (I can provide proof of receipts for all of them).

$494 at UrgentVet
$1069.66 at VEG
$344.72 at Ark in Spartanburg
$283.50 at Bonnie Braes
$100 at petsmart
$14 at pet supplies plus

Future expenses:
I expect to spend another $300+ on next visit ultra sound, exam and bloodwork
$200+ on spay (bloodwork will be used from last visit for this)
Plus vaccinations and other healthcare stuff to get her up to date. This doesn’t include food, groomers or any care her going forward this was just to get her back on her feet.


Her story:
On November 4th around 1 in the afternoon I was traveling on Highway 176 near Pacolet SC. I passed by a stray dog on the side of the road and immediately did a u turn at the next turn around and then another u turn to get back over to where the dog was.
I pulled the car between the dog and the road knowing most of the strays I try to stop to help tend to run away and if this one did that I could hopefully prevent it from running into the highway. I got out and walked slowly around the back of the car, opened the back passenger door and bent down asking the dog to come over. The dog walked slowly with its head down over to me and then to the car and stood there waiting for me to help it in, as if saying “I can’t do it myself but I want to get in”. All loaded up we were on way to a very long next day and a half.
The dog didn’t have a collar on, was covered in a matted coat all along the lower half and smelled like something I can’t even describe. Although we looked rough we were in overweight body condition and appeared to be somewhat recently clipped on the upper part of our body. A mystery in my mind….
As I am pondering what happed to this dog the name Maisie popped into my head. Looking back I see Maisie is sound asleep in the back seat. I swing into the near by animal care and control to check for a chip. Nothing, but not surprising. They can’t take the dog because they are full. The numerous other rescues I try for the rest of the day and the following day are also full and unwilling to take her.
The stench reaching my nose again made me decide that this dog needs a bath and having my own dogs at home it would probably be better to do someplace other than home. Off to pet supplies plus we go! I can not coax the dog out of the car so I decide that I’ll just carry the dog. This is the first time we yelp out in pain, poor girl. There is nothing glaringly wrong with her, so I continue with my attempt and get her from the car into a shopping cart and then into the pet store where she laid down for the entire bath. It’s at this point that I discover we are a girl and we are covered in flees, flees bites, sores and see the extent of the matted coat. Finally smelling better we head back to the house. Again she yelps when I pick her up out of the cart. Something is not right with her. After feeding the dogs at home off to the emergency vet we go, they will take her if there is something wrong with her, but they come back out saying nothing is wrong.
OK I say to myself maybe she is just scared or someone hurt her and she is anticipating pain, I will give her a little but, we do not know her story.
It’s about 2am and I am woken up from my sleep by a loud yelp, there is definitely something going on with this dog and I am going to get to the bottom of this. From 2-7am I am looking for a GOOD place to take her. Urgent Vet opens at 10am and has good reviews, we will go there as soon as they open. Plus we still haven’t eaten, drank, or gone to the bathroom yet.
Urgent Vet was great, they drew blood, looked at the gums, took her heart rate (180!!), temp (103 fever! )and were worried that she may have a pyometra, which is extremely dangerous if not taken care of soon with surgery, so off we go to another emergency vet. We spend the rest of the day at the emergency vet, where they do X-rays, ultrasounds, and urinalysis. The X-rays came back saying no pyometra (thank goodness) but with this weird area above her spine that looked like fluid. They then want to ultrasound that area as they are thinking blood, nothing was present when they tried to take a sample by needle! Moving to the bladder area the vet sees this weird white lacy looking stuff in the bladder, something she said she’s never seen before. So she calls over another vet, who also has never seen it before. They are thinking bladder cancer! I have felt very bad for Maisie this entire time but now I feel even worse, how did this poor dog get recused to just basically get a death sentence, it wasn’t fair! They did a urinalysis that came back no cancer cells which according to the vet didn’t mean anything. They felt like they couldn’t do anything further for her so we are sent home with some pain killers and antibiotics and very bald back and feeling very sad and helpless but my gut keeps telling me its not cancer (finger crossed). Especially after promising Maisie I was going to help her.
Maisie had become a different dog overnight, finally after 30 hours of no urination and not eating she started eating and went potty! She was so much more alert and aware of her surroundings. The turn around was crazy!
Two days after her er visit, on the recommendation of the emergency vet, we take her to a local vet to get her set up and start her real cancer screening. Her temp was back to normal, heart rate normal and she was finally eating, drinking and going potty at a more normal rate.
We found out she had hook worms but thankfully no heart worms. Still some fleas present but she had received medication for that, so that wasnt a major concern.
The vet wanted to re-ultrasound her and his ultrasound came back completely normal. He said what he sees on the X-ray was an air pocket that can happen with trauma and he believes the bladder had blood in it which apparently the urinalysis said there was blood in it, a little confusing because that wasn’t mentioned at the emergency vet.
He thought Maisie had been hit by a car, thrown from a car or beaten. He said just give her time, especially since she was getting better. Great!!
The next day I have to pick Maisie up to carry her down my stairs and she yelps again and does another yelp when she went to sit down, I noticed she doesn’t really lift her tail to go to the bathroom and she has a hard time getting comfortable in sitting or laying down. Something has still been missed on her and I feel she deserves the right diagnosis. So off to another vet so I can find someone who takes the time to go over her throughly and do an actual exam. Finally I found a vet that does that. She looked Maisie over from head to tail. She finds she’s very painful at the base of the tail and all the way down it. Another set of X-rays and we discover her tail is out (subluxated). I can appreciate how painful that is. They don’t want to do anything for that until the pain in the area decreases and to allow the body to heal some more but this will eventually be addressed with chiropractic care along with vaccinations, heart guard, normal flea meds, spaying and follow up visits.
Maisie got lucky that her trauma was not horrible and she has a soft landing here but my pocket book took a decent hit, I am asking for any help at all that can go towards the medical bills for this sweet girl who didn’t deserve the card she got handed.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated! She is a sweetheart and is now a new part of our family, as I can’t imagine the feeling she would feel being passed on to someone else. She is absolute velcro to me and hates when I am out of sight(photo is taken at the barn where she was watching me work). She totally ignores the other dogs and cats and thank goodness seems to be house broken. We are still hopeful to find her owner but I get the strong feeling that we aren’t. We have listed her as found on many different sites and I have looked every place I can think of for posting a lost dog and she is not listed anywhere.

Thank you for reading her story and thank you for any prayers, likes, shares and donations!
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    Melissa Boettcher
    Organizer
    Campobello, SC

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