Porter

Some days it is wonderful to be a volunteer.  Maybe you meet a bunch of nice people and work together to move a dog to a foster home.  Maybe a dog gets the treatment he needs and feels better right away.  Sometimes someone says something nice.  Or you get a great note from an adopting family whose dog is the love of their life.

And then there are days when you open an email and learn that a dog has been abandoned in a backyard for 5 years.  He's only alive because a neighbor jumped a fence when she saw his unconscious body.  When she called his family, who were on vacation, they said, "Oh, take him.  We don't want him."  And you learn that on top of heartworm and ear infections, he has an enormous malignant tumor in his mouth that is making it difficult for him to eat and breathe.  As if that weren't bad enough, the tumor itself has become infected.  (See the pink thing that kind of looks like a tongue in the photo above?  That's the tumor.)  If the dog were fostering with us, we'd have a hard time not naming him Job.

But he has been named Porter.  He's a beautiful red-headed Frenchie with a loving, happy personality and he has shown no possible reason why anyone could fling him in the backyard and forget him for years--not even providing the bare minimum care of heartworm preventative and yearly exams.  It's a hard day in dog rescue for us.

Very hard day.

Porter's tumor is malignant, but the vet he saw said there is a very high rate of success in removing these tumors.

Porter will be seeing a surgeon in the next few days.  Please keep a good thought for him.   If the surgeon says it is too late for Porter and surgery can't help him, he'll stay with us in hospice care, in a loving home, until it is time to say good-bye.  If we can get him well, we know that--despite his cancer history--there is a family in the world who will make it their business to see that Porter's remaining time on earth are full of the kind of attention, affection and respect that every dog deserves.

He's got a long row to hoe before he can get to the people he'll love, though: he's got to have surgery and be treated for his heartworm and have his ears cleaned and his teeth cleaned.  Please keep him in your thoughts.  And, of course, if you have a couple of bucks lying around, you can always send them to us for his care.

We thank you, and we know Porter would thank you.

By the way, is it just us or is this dog just as handsome as the day is long?  Heavens above, we are such a sucker for a red-haired boy.  Man, he's good looking! sighs

The Frog Princess