Thank you, Sponsors!

Thanks to a gift in memory of Mickey, Tess and all of the puppies have been fully sponsored. The sponsorships raised $1,002 to go toward the medical bills of this family. The $2 is from a little boy who gave his mother two one dollar bills to enclose with her check. Isn’t that great? We appreciate the show of support. The sponsorships really make a difference and today we have a very good example.

This morning the pups went to the shelter to see Dr. Stone for their fortnightly checkup. Overall the puppies are improving. They are all gaining weight. Donald and Daisy’s carpal joints are straightening. Their skin looks better and they’re getting hair. However, the skin scraping showed that there are still live demodectic mites. The conventional treatment for demodectic mange is to use a drug called Ivermectin over a long period of time to kill the mites and a series of baths, one every three days, for the duration of the treatment. This is a time-tested treatment plan for cases like these. Ivermectin is a relatively inexpensive drug and the pups have been on this therapy for a month. It works, but it’s slow and labor intensive.

There’s a drug called ProMeris^® that has been approved for the treatment of demodectic mange and would probably work faster than Ivermectin. The problem is that ProMeris is expensive—too expensive for the Shelter to buy it on a regular basis. But because of the sponsorships we were able to buy the doses we need to treat all four pups as well as their mother. Thanks to Caring Hands Animal Hospital in Urbana, CCHS was able to buy the doses they needed at the lowest price.

Sponsors, you can be proud that your generosity has made a difference to these animals. They’d give you all a lick on the nose if they could! Thank you.