This is Lady, our sweet and beautiful 7 year old girl. Unfortunately, Lady is no longer with us. She was a the product of years of indifference by uncaring owners who simply discarded her as if she was worthless when they, in fact, brought her to this point. We told her not to give up and she didn’t! We told her that it was not her fault that she didn’t receive simple medical care for her low functioning thyroid. We don’t know how long medical care has been withheld from her but at this point the lack of it has caused multiple problems for her and borders on abusive treatment. We told her we would help as long as she’d let us. Lady was quite the fighter. She came in an estimated 85 lbs. overweight. Her cholesterol level was 900 when it should have been 180! As a result of her obesity, her joints were painful and swollen and she coudl barely hobble short distances after caregivers helped her to her feet. In addition, she had hip dysplasia which added to her mobility problems. She had horrible ear infections that appear to have never been treated. The skin on her belly was infected and burned presumably due to her inability to come to a standing position and thereby having to lie in her own urine and feces. Lady is a kind girl who seems to neither ask for or expect anything and she was determined to fight and to love. Her owner’s parting words were, “Well, she’s not much of a prize but maybe someone will want her!” Quite frankly, we have no tolerance for that kind of cruel attitude because Lady was worth far more and we definitely wanted that for her. She was a Cinderella in waiting. During the several weeks that we had her, we showed her all the love that she had missed. Even the cat loved Lady! We immediately put her on thyroid medicines, she lost almost half the weight she needed to lose and was well on her way to becoming the golden we all knew she could be – inside and out! We just needed to show her human kindness to make up for all of those years of neglect. We learned that Lady had tons of personality, LOVED kids and over time she perfected that golden nudge. She loved to be touched and would nudge and paw you for pets. Judging from the number of paws given, she is got a lot of exercise lifting that paw! Lady showed us that she really wanted to live. She learned to roll on the floor, do the golden wiggle and most importantly trust in the kindness of good people. However, we could not undo the damage that he been done in time to save our Lady. Our Lady, who had been progressing so well, crossed the Rainbow Bridge. She could finally walk and was getting a waist line but it wasn’t enough. Yesterday, at her foster’s home, she began behaving like he just didn’t feel well . As the day progressed she seemed to feel worse. When she got to the ER her heart rate was very high. When she did not respond to the meds, they did an ultra-sound to determine the cause and found that her heart was not the problem, just a symptom. Her abdomen was full of pus. When they opened her up, her intestine was perforated and the leaking stool into the abdominal cavity is what caused the massive infection. Although major surgery probably could have repaired the perforation, the chances she would have recovered from the surgery and the sepsis from the infection was very small. The doctor also reported that she had multiple small tumors on her liver. We had to say good-bye to our sweet girl. There is no way to know what caused the perforation; however, it could have been cancer or years of obesity and poor health and untreated thyroid disease. The foster said up until she went down last evening she had been happy and loving life and anyone who had a chance to meet Lady instantly knew she as special. Despite feeling horrible she was always sweet and gentle and grateful for the attention her many admirers willingly lavished on her. Lady was dealt the wrong cards and we came into her life too late. This one wasn’t fair at all. We will all greatly miss her.