Contributed by her Forever
Mom
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| Miri fka CP Lena immortalized in pastels! |
From time to time a puppy mill rescue
includes a pregnant female and the Col. Potter Volunteers provide the only medical
attention the mother-to-be has ever had.
Lina, for example, arrived at CPCRN at about eight years of age,
estimated to be within about two weeks or so of her due date, exhausted and
shaking.
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| CP Lena at intake |
Her CP Foster parents watched
her very closely and observed that she seemed to be having a problem urinating,
so they whisked her off to be examined on an emergency basis by their trusted
vet, and the results were sobering.
There was a huge stone (size of a quarter) in Lina’s small bladder that
was preventing urination, and her calcium level was perilously low. The puppies had turned and were lined up to
drop into the birth canal, but the lack of calcium indicated that the
contractions would not be strong enough to push the puppies out, and there was
the issue of the canal being blocked by the bladder stone.
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| Thanks to Col. Potter Lena’s puppies… |
To save her life and the lives of
her puppies, Lena had emergency surgery to deliver her five puppies by
C-section, remove the stone from her bladder, spay her, scrape her teeth (her
lower front teeth were all missing and her back teeth were green, and five more
teeth just fell out as they were cleaned), and extracting a back molar with a
painful abscess.
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…were born into Freedom and
Love!
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It is almost certain that Lena and all of her puppies would have perished cruelly
had she been left to deliver in the puppy mill.
As it was, the puppies were taken from her about a week too soon so they
were all about half the weight they should have been at birth, and the smallest
survived for only two days, in spite of everyone’s best effort to save them
all. Thanks to the dedication of her
CP Foster parents, and the love and support of so many Volunteers, Lena recovered from her ordeal
and was soon ready to start over.
On
Mother’s Day weekend, 2006, after spending eight long years in a puppy mill,
Lena went to her Forever Home where she became Miri Lace “with the
pretty face”, a treasured member of the family who learned to love life
completely, giving it all the gusto you can imagine!
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Miri running across her yard,
enjoying her Freedom!
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Puppy mill survivors have many
scars, seen and unseen. At eight years
of age, Miri Lace may well have had as many as fourteen or fifteen litters, and
anyone who has been pregnant even once can appreciate the terrible physical
stress these puppy mill mommas are forced to endure, even if they are kept in
clean cages. Sadly, within five short
years of her rescue, Cushings disease ultimately crept in to take this precious
little girl from those who loved her. Miri lost her battle on November 22, 2010, but only after
she filled the rest of her short life up with everything she could gather.
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Miri filled every day with Love!
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We have
other dogs we love, we have other dogs we loved, we have been loved by many
dogs, but few have ever made an impression on so many as Miri did. She
touched us all with her strength, love, and endurance, and our hearts still
ache for her.
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Miri said farewell far too
soon…
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On
Mother’s Day and every day, we love you, Miri Lace with the pretty face – and we
miss you more than you can imagine...
