Sadie
Success Stories
Sadie
VA - 2010
In January 2007, my dog and I found Sadie roaming the streets of our town on our way home from a walk in the park. I called our local shelter to pick her up in case her owners were looking for her and for her to be safely off the streets. I told the shelter that if they were unable to find her owners, I would adopt her. She was house trained, knew commands and very sweet natured....so I knew she had to belong to someone. After a month of being at the shelter, we brought Sadie home. Unfortunately in October 2009, we lost our other dog to a mysterious illness who we had had for 12 years...since he was a 12 week old puppy. We lost our sweet boy and Sadie lost her companion.
Over the next several months, we saw changes in Sadie and thought it was just depression and getting older. Over Memorial Day weekend, Sadie stopped eating altogether. It was usual that she would go a day without eating, but not much longer. We called the vet and they wanted to see her. The bloodwork came back that she had kidney issues and they began treating her. Unfortunately, the treatment was not working for her.
I explained my situation to the vet who we had been going to for over 10 years that I had recently lost my job and couldn't afford to pay more than $2000 to help save her. They were very accommodating, but Sadie took a turn for the worse on Friday evening so we had to make a decision to transport her to emergency care or to euthanize her. We couldn't give up on her so we had her seen by several specialists. This was another mystery case. We had several vets look at her and consulted with others outside of the hospital.
Finally, one vet said...let's try this test as a last resort. It came back positive! Sadie has Addison's disease. So many of her symptoms are classic of other illnesses so testing for Addison's is a shot in the dark. After spending close to $10,000 on Sadie, we finally had an answer, but had long term expenses to keep her healthy. She will require daily doses of Prednisone and a shot every 21 days to keep her healthy which adds up to more than $200 a month.
While doing some research on Addison's disease, I stumbled across The Brown Dog Foundation's website. I saw that they offered monetary assistance for those dogs requiring medications to keep them alive. They have been an amazing and very well organized organization to work with and we deeply appreciate their gift to us and to Sadie.