Our family was watching the news here in Fresno, CA, and saw a story about our local Animal Control Center who needed the community's help. The center was at capacity with dogs and needed to find them homes or they would ultimately end up being euthanized.

We decided to look at their website to see available dogs. That’s when we found a French Bulldog that piqued our interest (we currently own a Frenchie and have been considering getting her a playmate).

A day later, we visited the center and met the Frenchie we saw online. This poor thing was skin and bones, starving, and scared. He was such a sweet dog who we thought needed to be nourished and loved back to health.

His back story… he was found on the streets of Fresno and had been in Animal Control for 4 days before we arrived. He had severe diarrhea, dehydration, and was a bit reluctant to eat. He was 17 lbs when he was admitted to the center on 1/12/26 (about 10 lbs underweight). Anyone who has adopted from Animal Control knows that you are taking the pet as is and are essentially rolling the dice when it comes to the animal's health status/issues.

We ultimately decided to take a gamble on this little guy. He needed to get out of there ASAP to have any chance of survival and was too sweet to leave. They neutered him, and 2 days later we went to pick him up and bring him home.

Since then, it’s been 2 weeks - unfortunately, this little guy has not recovered like we had hoped. Our initial thought was he just needed a vet visit, good diet, and a loving home. This has not been the case. Our 1st vet visit on 1/19/26, we did the full rundown of blood work, fecal exam, weight, and temp check. He was diagnosed as anemic, severely underweight, gastrointestinal issues (diarrhea), and a high white blood cell count. His fecal exam came back okay with no signs of parasites. He was prescribed special food, probiotics, steroids, and antibiotics for a week.

We had a follow-up on 1/26/26 and he had lost weight! He was down to 15 lbs - super concerning… still has diarrhea, pees every 45-60 min, and needs to be hand-fed to eat. We did another round of blood work - still high white blood cell counts and anemic. The vet recommended testing for EPI (Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency); results came back negative. It was then recommended we do X-rays and ultrasound - which we did.

We received the results of the X-ray and ultrasound today, 1/28/26, and there were signs of a metal object in his intestines. The vet said it looked almost like a BB. This BB seems to be leaching zinc into his body and ultimately giving this poor dog zinc poisoning. Since he is super malnourished, it’s likely that the poisoning is accelerated. We don’t know how much time this little dude has.

His best chance for life is to have the metal object removed, unfortunately, this procedure is quite expensive. We are already around $1500 in and are at our limits financially. We are trying to save this dog's life, but need a helping hand from our community - if the stars align and the world comes through - this little dude has a shot at life!