Day 1
Simon was found as a "stray" - we think he must be a cruelty case dump near Kansas City MO. We were notified last week about him and Lindsay of course agreed to take him in. He arrived via CARE transport on Saturday night 1/30. We were told he was emaciated, 7 years old, not feeling all that good and heartworm positive. Marie Silverstein, the Medical Director at BDHP, offered to foster him and requested my help in picking him up from the transport and giving him a bath. I figured I’d be there for 2 or 3 hours. Little did I know.
Simon arrived around 6:15 PM on the transport. He was completely emaciated, literally skin and bones, his tail appeared to be broken AND he was BLIND! He was very nervous in the car until I climbed in back with him. Marie was really concerned about his condition and we decided that taking him to Deer Creek was in everyone’s best interest.
We asked that they take films of Simon’s tail and since they were at it, did his chest for the Heartworm films that we would need. (You have to know how bad they are, so that you can treat at the appropriate level.) His tail WAS broken in at least one spot (it was also either amputated partway previously or came off traumatically) and has severe arthritis in several spots on the tail. Dr Lane suggested we consider amputating when we neuter/pexy, which we have since decided we will need to do. It is VERY painful; you have to be careful when you touch him in back as it is causing a lot of pain. He is also very anemic - so anemic that we would usually consider a transfusion at that level, but it appeared to be chronic and we will do a blood draw in a week to see if it is better with rest and good nutrition. We got him on pain meds and also antibiotics for the significant skin abscesses and heartworm. He is a younger than we were originally told - 7 - appears to be 3-4. Some of his abscesses are pressure wounds, and some are probably from cruelty. His ears are pretty clean and they did a skin scrape, no demodex mange. He has a few ugly skin tags that can also be removed when he is neutered. His ears are ragged from frostbite damage.
Simon is completely blind – we will get him looked at by VRCC later this week to see if surgery may be option that will allow him to regain sight. (Edit 2-6: Simon’s cataracts are a hereditary condition and he will be unable to regain his sight. His eyes will be removed when he is neutered.)
He is down to 87lbs – he was 94 on Monday. We have to get him to a slightly healthier weight before we can treat his heartworm. Dr. Winton has decided we will wait until the week of the 15th for his first shot.) Simon’s ideal weight is 120 lbs, so he is at least 35-40 pounds underweight. Seeing him in person is really shocking, he is just so emaciated.
He ate well when we finally got him home that night. We had difficulting getting him to drink his water, so Marie is mixing a lot more water into his food. Intros with Marie's dogs did not go well. We think that Simon, due to his blindness, has learned to attack before he can be attacked. If he is crated, he doesn't have any problem with the dogs approaching him.
He knows no commands that we could see yet, but Marie will work on those.
We did bathe and feed him that night, and then it took him a long time to lay down last night, but I believe he slept well for about 5 hours.
I ended up staying with Marie and Simon for about six hours.
