I never intended to adopt a special needs dog. In fact, when we stumbled upon Lucy we hadn’t even been talking about adding a dog to our family. Our almost 11 year old greyhound, Princess, was fine as an only dog and we had talked about keeping it that way until she passed as she comes by her name “Princess” quite naturally.
A friend had shared a link to the Facebook page of a local in-home rescue that specializes in special needs dogs and I had been following them for a couple of months when a picture of Lucy appeared. They thought she was a Rhodesian Ridgeback with dwarfism but didn’t know the extent of her issues. I thought she was adorable so I began to send emails to the rescue. As it was about Christmas, we arranged a meeting at rescue so they could meet us and see how Lucy responded to us. There were two other parties also interested in her and meeting her as well. My husband begrudgingly accepted the begging and pleading if myself and our girls to go meet Lucy, who was called “Padden” at the time because she was found at the side of a local road “Padden Parkway”.
Upon meeting “Padden” it was clear she was a little timid, but she did come over to each of us for belly rubs and petting. Her tail wagged the entire time and she loved interacting with us with her toys. She had one significantly bent leg, severely under developed back legs and no endurance to stand on her back legs for any length of time. The rescue was going to be taking her to their vet on New Year’s Eve morning to see the extent of her troubles and if there were a possibility of a surgical correction, which they were willing to pay for before adopting her out. Would we like to be at that appointment? I said absolutely!
On the morning of the 31st, we were getting ready for a New Year’s Eve bunco party and “E”, our youngest and I headed over to the veterinary office. It was snowing all morning and seemed to be picking up as we waited which put us in a festive mood. The vet took X-Rays and diagnosed her with Hypertrophic Osteodystorphy and or Premature Physeal Closure. Could be dwarfism, however, there isn’t a lot of information or physical markers for dwarfism in animals because usually they’re euthanized so there isn’t anything conclusive with any of the diagnosis, only in the ramifications. Some growth plates stopped growing at different times than others on the same bone. That caused some of the twisting. Some bones were too short. Her pelvis is not curved appropriate. Her back legs didn’t fully develop and at 8 to 10 months old, she already had arthritis in her spine. Basically, she was one hot mess and surgery wasn’t an option.
We were also told that because of her abnormalities, there could be internal issues too although her blood tests came back normal. There is no way to know if she’ll have the normal life-span of a dog of the same breed(s) because of this risk of internal issues (think kidney deformities or liver function issues, the types of things that don’t kill immediately but can over time). If we adopted this dog, we’d have to understand she may only live and have a quality life for as little as 2-3 years. On the other hand, she could live a normal and mostly healthy life for 8-9 years. There were no guesses and no guarantees. Were we sure we still wanted to adopt her? “E” and I answered emphatically that we were.
We left the vets office with plans for the rescue to bring Padden over for a home visit. I was already calling her Lucy in my mind. I knew she was ours and though I was a bit nervous about her prognosis, I also knew that whatever time she had we’d love her and give her a good home.
At the home visit, the rescue told us they were willing for us to take her right then and there. I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea as we were having 8 people over for the evening and she was so shy. I didn’t want to stress her out on her first day in our home. They thought it would be fine so we signed the papers, wrote the check, let them microchip her and say their goodbyes. We officially had a new family member!
lucythegreat 