Monday, April 25, 2016

Saving Half-Pint

There is a puppy mill located less than ten miles from my home, I happened upon its existence in 2013 when looking for a hypo-allergenic pup. I found 10 week old Shadow listed on a website, he was about to be taken to a dog auction, Shadow became my Julian... Since that day I have monitored the activity at this puppy mill closely.

On 12/10/14 I rescued another Havanese from Craigslist, Pappy, now Maurice, had suffered significant abuse and neglect... it was no surprise to me when I learned of his origins in the same puppy mill as Julian... Fast forward to October 2015 when Maurice was finally over his health hurdles, and our vet bills were about to seriously decline as soon as Julian had his dental cleaning, all major work was behind us for at least a year...

Half-Pint's Listing Photo
For a month I had been following three puppies on the puppy mills website... every day their price would fall because they had "loose knees" I had contacted rescue organizations and begged them to pull these puppies but they ignored me... It reached a point where these puppies could no longer wait... a friend was able to foster two of them but could not take the third... In my heart and my conscious I could not leave that pup in the mill to be murdered... I asked her to pull all three puppies and I would take the third, the runt, the sickest, little Half Pint...

On 10/16/15 I dropped Julian off for his dental cleaning, and went over to my friends house to pick up Half Pint... he was so tiny he fit in the palm of my hand weighing only 2.2lbs... later that night at his first vet appointment he was diagnosed with every form or parasite you can imagine including coccidia, and several weeks later Giardia as well... At this time Half-Pint's knees were diagnosed as a grade 1-2 nothing to be terribly concerned about... looking at all of his primary medical costs those first few months, and all of his behavioral issues we had to work through, I thought I had dodged a bullet!

 Hailey, Half-Pint, and Hunter's freedom video...


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