The highlight of our volunteer's feeding nights during the
past few months has been this little girl.
Since we started feeding her a few
months ago, she has been excitedly greeting us each week as we make our feeding
rounds, sometimes dashing dangerously across the road to meet us with little
care for passing vehicles. She was missing most of her fur and reminded us of
Elmo (read about the original Elmo here).
Even though her skin looked bad, it did not look to be giving her any trouble,
and with our hands full with other more urgent rescues, we just left her be and
visited her every Saturday.
However,
we noticed her starting to scratch a lot more recently and have open sores, and were concerned that her skin
condition may have become worse. Despite our lack of resources, we decided it
was finally time to take her to the vet. Even though she was familiar with us,
and had always been friendly and even happy to see us, it still took us 2 hours
to capture her. When we finally managed to corner her, she was so frightened
that she started snarling at us. But once we got hold of her and she realized
that we were not going to hurt her, she went back to being her sweet and
friendly self.
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| Searching for her |
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| Caught and too shy to look at us |
We
took her to the vet the next day. She had a blood test and skin scrape done,
and both came back negative for any illnesses or parasites. The vet concluded
that her lack of fur was due to malnutrition. Malnutrition was also the reason
for her small size. She weighed only 14kg. Due to her size and her puppy-like
demeanor, we had always thought her to be a puppy, but the vet estimated
her to be about 2 years old. The vet had also commented on her sweet
disposition. Since she had been given the all clear by the vet, she was sent home with medicated shampoo and some medicines for her dry elephant skin.
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| Coming out of the carrier |
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| Sweet little Bonnie; look at her dried skin. |
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| Curious of her surrounding |
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| Doing a skin scrape |
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| Such a nice demeanor despite having her blood drawn |
We
have since named this little Elmo girl, Bonnie. As we did not have any fosters available, Bonnie was sent home with a volunteer temporarily. She
eats very well, as if fearing each meal would be her last, and is not a fussy
eater. What is saddening though, is that, she does not seem to drink any water.
In fact, she does not seem to KNOW how to drink water. We watched her closely
for 7 days and sure enough, not once did she approach the water bowl. She even uses her nose to push her towels to cover the water bowls so we often find her towels and bedding soaked in her water bowls. When we
try dabbing water on her mouth, she just turns away to face the wall. Maybe, in her time on the
streets, where water was hard to come by, she has learnt to survive without
water. Whatever the reason, it seems she has forgotten how to drink. In order
to make sure she has enough fluids, we add a lot of broth in her food. Her pee
is dark and very pungent from the lack of water and her poo looks fossilized. Despite all this, Bonnie
is still so sweet and affectionate. All she wants is just for someone to love
her. When you pat her, she leans onto you and closes her eyes in obvious
enjoyment.
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| Poor Bonnie, her skin feels like sandpaper |
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| Sad little camel |
Bonnie
needs a foster immediately. She is healthy and her skin condition is not
contagious. We are also appealing for help with Bonnie's vet bills. If you can
help with her vet bills, or foster her, email hopedogrescue@singnet.com.sg
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| All she needs is love . . . . . |
