Carly's Story

October 2016 -- October 10th 2016

Carly was turned in to the overnight drop box at a shelter in Wildomar, CA on October 10thThe shelter was kind enough to contact us rather than euthanize her right away (which quite honestly, many shelters would have opted to do). Here is what the shelter had to say about her:

"We believe Carly is approximately 8-years-old and she is very sweet. She also passed a dog test. Carly entered our shelter in horrible condition. At a minimum, she has a large facial tumor, ear infections, bad teeth, and she was so matted everywhere (plus fox tails in her coat) that we are having to shave almost her whole body. Her feces were so matted to her body that we discovered maggots in the poop we shaved off. She is already spayed and overweight at 49 pounds."

Through proper grooming of her paws and toes, more fox tails were found embedded into her skin and infected. She has a dozen or so fox tails grown into her paws. Also, through some microchip detective work we have learned a more accurate approximation of her age is around 13.

Here is the Live Video we took of her rescue on Periscope

https://www.periscope.tv/CampCocker/1dRJZRBoLlmJB?

Wow. We have a lot of work to do (In addition to the other major medical doggies we've rescued in the last few weeks)

Please please consider donating just $5 to help pay for this poor girls surgery? If everyone who reads her story donated just $5, we would be able to fix this girl up in no time and find her a home too!

In addition to her vetting, we need to board, groom, and feed her. If you can spare your coffee money this week, it would literally be a life-saver!

Update -- October 19th 2016

with heavy hearts . . . we have sad news about our newbie girl, Carly.

Camp Cocker Rescue just saved her last week from a shelter in Wildomar, California. She had been left in the overnight drop box by someone with a note stating she could no longer be cared for.

It turns out that Carly had a microchip that we were able to trace back to the original shelter that put the chip in her. Ten years ago, Carly was in the SPCA/Long Beach, CA animal shelter where they had her on record as being a three year old dog. So that puts her age at around 13 years old right now.

Poor Carly, whomever adopted her ten years ago may have loved her but they were not prepared to care for her either with vet visits or grooming. This is the disappointment of when we learn someone from the general public has adopted a cocker spaniel from a shelter, but they have not been screened and are not aware of how much maintenance this breed requires.

Well we knew Carly had that tumor on her face but we did not know how deeply inside of her nasal passage it had grown and taken root. If it was just an external tumor, it would have been much easier to remove.

So off we went to the board certified surgeon to get a consult on the type of extensive surgery that would have been required to remove the facial tumor. Before surgery, cancer had to be ruled out and a cytology was sent out on both the facial tumor and the lymph node on Carly's left side (the lymph nodes are swollen, which can indicate Lymphoma).

Well before we did all of this, our regular vet, Dr. Stirewalt, had done extensive diagnostics on the rest of Carly's body. X-rays to look for cancer, and full lab work. One of Carly's lab results pointed to Cushing's Disease so Dr. Stirewalt gave Carly an ACT STIM test to confirm a Cushing's diagnosis.

At the same time, an ultrasound was done on Carly to take a look at her adrenal gland (which is affected by Cushing's Disease). Dr. Stirewalt noticed an abnormally oversized pancreas. So before beginning on Cushing's medication, another blood test had to be sent out to see if there was elevated levels of insulin in Carly's body due to a pancreatic tumor.

While we had already begun with the surgical specialist testing, the results came back on the insulin levels. It was confirmed that Carly DOES have an insulin producing tumor on her pancreas, thus she is not a candidate to begin Cushing's medication.

She is most likely well into her Cushing's disease from her pot belly and weight and with early diagnosis of Cushing's it can be managed with success. If her former owner had been taking her to annual vet visits and getting bloodwork done annually, the Cushing's could have been caught years ago and she would have never gotten this advanced into the disease. So we already know that she has advanced Cushing's disease.

She has a pancreatic tumor and if nothing else was going on with Carly, that one is a major issue to do surgery, remove it, biopsy it, and if it is cancerous, the pancreatic cancer is very aggressive and chances are low she could survive for very long.

The last bit of dreaded news was the cancer in her lymph node and her facial tumor. This was not the outcome we had dreamed of for this sweet girl and we are heartbroken that she was neglected for this many years with zero medical care (and not even basic grooming, our vet's staff took hours to shave down her and she had fox tails embedded in her feet and several open wounds where the fox tails were still trying to leave the toes).

Sadly, we are going to send Carly over the Rainbow Bridge today.
We want to make Carly's going away party the best one we can, taking her for a nice visit to a park to get some yummy smells, taking her to McDonald's for a Big Mac and then to our vet who will give her a nice sedation so she can be relaxed and sleepy first.

For anyone who follows us on Periscope, we will do a little Carly Periscope of her before we get to the vet (but we will turn it off when we go into the vet's office, for Carly to have her privacy).

So many of you donated to her and we ran up a huge vet bill thinking that there would be a positive outcome. We can't thank you all enough for giving Carly a chance and having the hope that we did that she could have a healthy comfortable future ahead of her.

This is a sad day here at Camp Cocker, yet at the same time, we have other dogs like Sally Mae who has a brighter future (Sally Mae is getting her first of two ear surgeries right now).

Thank you to everyone that supports our little rescue group.
and thank you for everyone who has been a part of the Carly village.

Maybe if you are all thinking about her today at around 5pm, you can send her all as much love in your hearts as you can muster and she will get your messages.

-Camp Cocker Rescue Team