I usually don’t post on here but your story was truly heartwarming. What a holiday miracle for this dog! Bless you.
[QUOTE=ranaponting;6026270]
I need help, is my puppy going to be ok?[/QUOTE]
What are you talking about?
Just a spammer. Already reported it.
Wow, what a miracle. Huge kudos to you, and please keep us updated!
LOL… I just have this image of Miss Money sitting at the side of the road deciding which car she should run in front of…
Obviously, she picked the right one!!
LOL cute!!
[QUOTE=Ruth0552;6026570]
LOL… I just have this image of Miss Money sitting at the side of the road deciding which car she should run in front of…
Obviously, she picked the right one!!:D[/QUOTE]
Actually, legal issues are a little muddy. If the owner were to “come out of the woodwork” the OP might have a claim against the owner for letting his/her dog run loose and causing the accident. And if there is a leash law in that county or municipality, the owner might have to pay the OP.
OP, you might want to check with your auto insurance company. Mine paid once. Not that much, but it paid hundreds.
And this reminded me of the time when I’d just bought Cloudy and was boarding him down at Robert’s barn at North Hammock. His employees were feeding a stray dog. When the dog got hit by a car, the owner of the car demanded that Robert’s insurance company pay for the damage to the car. The car owner’s ins company paid for the car, I think, and the dog only had minor damage as did the car.
Great of you to save her. I’ve paid hundreds for dogs I’ve scraped off of the road. I probably would not pay 15,000 for a total stranger animal though. And great of the vet to cut the cost. Vets in both Atlanta and Savannah have given me discounts for animals that were not mine. Once in Atlanta a car hit a dog right on Roswell Road. The person who hit the dog stopped, I stopped, and the nice Coke truck driver stopped and blocked traffic. An Atlanta cop drove right by us all stopped there blocking 2 lanes of traffic. The vet right down from there saved the dog for cost. No one claimed her despite my putting up signs all over the neighborhood that day, so Purebred Rescue took the old female poodle for me when she got out of the hospital. Turns out a lot of won’t claim their dogs when they get old and feeble.
Great of you to save the dog. From a stray to a priceless pet. Well, OK a 15,000 priced dog. Make sure you keep her fenced in. She’s obviously not street savvy.
Truly heartwarming.:yes:
I had missed this story, but it was named the story of the year on Off Course, so that brought me here to read it.
They were right, it is that and more, thank you.
What a sweet story, and a very lucky dog…
Miss Money went for her recheck today. Things are progressing…but slowly. She is still not able to walk, and I have to put a sling on her to get her out to go to the bathroom. She has a bladder infection now as she isnt able to go out as frequently as she should 
This has been my happiest vet visit in a long time though…I came home under $150!
Overall, Im amazed at her courage. She has kept her tail wagging through the whole ordeal. We have an appointment with a rehab specialist on Monday so Im hoping that will give us a jumpstart on her walking.
And Im no angel, not at all…I just had the guilt and thankfully finances werent a major issue at this time. Before my father in laws passing, I dont know what I would have done. Maybe the same thing…who knows, it really was a emotional decision that had to be made in seconds.
She’s got a forever home now…and at least with the shattered pelvis she is likely not going to get free to chase cars for some time!!
Hubby is getting a new camera for christmas, so the photos will be delayed…but they will be here!
[QUOTE=didgery;6025610]
What a generous spirit and wallet you have! I’m touched by your story.
Tangent:
A friend and I agonized over how to deal with a found dog a few years ago. I found the dog in the public roadway in a place where I’d seen her before. My friend took her into her home and fell head-over-heels in love. We both guessed that the poor, emaciated, cringing thing lived rather close to where we had found her. We had her microchip scanned at a discreet vet clinic rather than at the shelter (probably a no-no, legally), and the address which came up was directly adjacent to where she’d turned up. Finally, I called from a public phone in order to get a sense of the people. It turns out the girlfriend—and registered owner—was delighted get the dog out of her life because she feared her boyfriend would kill her (the dog), and she was very happy to get the microchip info. switched in secret so that her violent guy would not find out. The dog is very happy and safe today. I can’t say one way or the other about the girlfriend, though I did advise her of some numbers to call for help in relocating HERSELF![/QUOTE]
Ye gods. I’d have lost sleep over that one, wondering what happened to her…
Around here one big source of strays is migrants and lake people (the cottagers who come up for the summer.) The dogs are usually migrants–they come up to work the ag fields and just leave the dogs running loose when they move on at the end of the season. Cottage people seem to dump cats a lot. When I had my kitten at the vet (she got dumped at our barn, no idea where SHE came from) there was a man in with a dog that had turned up on his porch three-legged lame that morning–nice lab/lab mix type who was doing the doggy equivalent of the toddler cling (if she could have wrapped her “arms” around his leg, she would have.) He was ‘not sure’ he was keeping her but I think the dog had other ideas.
I saw a dog get hit by a car once a few years ago. The driver could have easily avoided the dog by simply taking their foot off the gas let along touching the brakes as they just clipped the dog on the hip with the right side of the bumper.
I picked the dog up and put her in my car and drove the couple blocks to my house. I gave Sub-q fluids and gave a shock dose of dex then called animal control. Their answering machine said it was after hours so I should call the sheriff at this number. I call that number and they tell me to call animal control! So I put her back in the car and drove her to the emergency vet. I knew they did the emergency work for the county. They said they would treat her but I would have to pay the bill if I wanted to know how she did. I could not pay for it so I left without knowing.
A few days later I called the local humane society and was told she did not make it but that her owner was very grateful that I cared for her. Apparently they had bathed her in the yard hence the no collar and she saw a squirrel and took off running. Poor thing.
Yours is a VERY lucky dog to have you. Hope you are happy for many years to come.
Yeah…what they said. :eek:
Merry Christmas Money…you had an angel watching over you. Definitely please post some pics of her.
Sorry, but you were really robbed by the vets…That was an obscene charge they put together…even at their “reduced” rate of $15K.
I do have an issue with any vet who couldn’t lay aside at least half the charges for a situation like this, but the imnportant thing I guess is that you were the one who hit this dog. The planets all aligned correctly, and there is obviously a reason this dog came into your life, and you in hers.
But shame on your vets, really. Imagine the PR they could get doing this for free!
YOU my dear are an angel among us.
Wow, this story is even sweeter with the information that all that money came from your FIL, who loved dogs :).
Our town’s Animal Control will pick up reasonable vet bills for strays (their budget certainly couldn’t accomodate $15K!).
I found an emaciated, elderly, cat last summer, sitting in the road. I asked all the people who lived nearby if she were theirs and they all said “no”, but she’d been hanging around for weeks. I took her home and called Animal Control. They said that, if they picked her up, they’d have to take her to a high kill shelter in NH, because they were full and so was every other shelter in the area. They suggested that, if I could, I should hang onto her for a while while we tried to find an owner. I took her to my own vet (she looked terrible). They looked her over, decided she was probably hyperthyroid rather than starving, drew blood to check for that, gave her a rabies shot and some antibiotics. She was hyperthyroid and I picked up meds for her. Animal Control picked up the tab for all of it. It wasn’t huge, probably a couple of hundred.
I did eventually find the owner (long story), it took me two weeks to do so. They lived about three miles from where I found her. Animal Control didn’t try to recover the money for the vet from the owner either. Owner got off easy, no vet bill, the rest of they thyroid meds free. I fed the cat for two weeks and, when I found out who the owner was, picked up a collar and tag for her before I returned her, so she wouldn’t end up in the kill shelter next time she wandered off. No remibursement for anyone. Pays to be irresponsible sometimes! They weren’t even looking for the cat, who’d been missing for over a month :(.
What a touching story. Hope you and Money have many good years together
Cannot believe the griping that always results when someone posts about a stiff emergency vet bill.
The dog had multiple surgeries, round-the-clock monitoring and treatment in the ICU by techs with superior training. Operation and consultation with a veterinary pulmonologist. An orthopedic surgeon. Blood transfusions.
“Good will” is wonderful. But if emergency vets made it a habit of waiving their fees every time a “feel-good” opportunity arose, pretty soon we’d have no more emergency vets. Which would suck. And why would one dog be more deserving than someone else’s? Is that a decision any of you could make?
[QUOTE=Mara;6033867]
Cannot believe the griping that always results when someone posts about a stiff emergency vet bill.
The dog had multiple surgeries, round-the-clock monitoring and treatment in the ICU by techs with superior training. Operation and consultation with a veterinary pulmonologist. An orthopedic surgeon. Blood transfusions.
“Good will” is wonderful. But if emergency vets made it a habit of waiving their fees every time a “feel-good” opportunity arose, pretty soon we’d have no more emergency vets. Which would suck. And why would one dog be more deserving than someone else’s? Is that a decision any of you could make?[/QUOTE]
Seriously. Anyone ever see what your hospital bills REALLY are before insurance takes a big piece of it away? Vets usually aren’t dealing with insurance. You have to pay what it’s actually worth. In this case, there’s a huge amount of expensive elements, to the point I certainly hope no one on here would have judged the OP if she’d opted to euthanize well before the bill got that high. (Who’m I kidding, we’re COTH-we have more judges than a circuit court.) None of that care was/is free.
I thought hard about posting this and I hope you’ll all forgive me for being the voice of dissent.
I think it’s wrong to spend that chunk of change saving an animal who has no idea people can give or take away life when human beings who do understand that also need help and would be materially helped by an act of charity that large are suffering.
OP, I am glad you did what you could to maximize this dog’s quality of life as you could when given the opportunity. Nothing takes away from that; it’s a great a noble act. I’m also glad you could honor your FIL-- that he was a dog lover, that he left your family an inheritance, that you chose to do as you did.
I’m a sucker for animals and a curmudgeon when it comes to people. But lately, I have found in necessary to get firm on the ranking of people and animals in my own mind. I don’t know be ethical any more and not do that. To me, the only difference between people and animals that matters enough to talk about how we distribute charity is the fact that humans “get it”-- the whole mess of things that come along with being helped or not, deserving or not, judged or appreciated unconditionally, and can understand the conversation about help in a way that animals cannot. A human who knows he needs help and is denied suffers more than an animal who was not aware of the option.
