The above really does pull at the heart strings – the dedication of these people to give this little dog a fighting chance and the lengths they are going to in achieving this, but by all accounts this little dog is living on borrowed time and more importantly to me at least, is the quality of life they describe where he does seem to be happy and pain free, but he can’t be held or picked up because it may crush his lungs. Is the way a dog should live?
Is Max really that pain free? We know that dogs naturally tend to hide their pain – to show this makes them weaker in the eyes of other dogs, and if I think of his condition in human terms, I am sure there must be some degree of pain. I have seen countless cases of dogs where people said euthanize, but the conditions were treatable, and foundations such as this did indeed help the dog to recover its health, but by all accounts Max will never recover – where do you draw the line?
Max’s story really does make me think and wonder. Each and every dog in my opinion does deserve every chance of survival, but are the lengths that are being undertaken with this little dog really the right thing to do, especially as he is not a family dog where the owner would go to any lenghts? Should wonderful Mother Nature not have been allowed to take her natural course and this little one would have gone to his friends at the Rainbow Bridge?
Could the funds that the foundation has poured and will continue to pour into keeping this little dog alive longer really the right thing to do? No, you cannot put a value on a life, but when I see the situations in shelters where money is always desperately needed just to find food to feed healthy dogs, is it the right thing to do to spend so much of a foundations funds on a little dog like Max?
Guys, I am not judging, I am asking – what do you think – where do we draw the line? Read the story below and make your own decisions.
the miraculous story of max, an amazing chihuahua born with scoliosis
this is max’s miraculous story told by his rescue mama, sue rogers of the mia foundation.
little max was born with severe scoliosis and it was suggested that he be euthanized at birth. his breeder couldn’t accept this after seeing how hard max was fighting to stay alive and so max came to live with us at the mia foundation. when he arrived at only 6 weeks old, he could barely walk, but we exercised his little legs and attempted to straighten his spine several times a day. low and behold, within a week he was not only walking, but running!
even though we continued max’s physical therapy, his spine proceeded to get noticeably worse as he grew and a new symptom occurred. when people he didn’t know held him he would have a panic attack. these panic episodes became so bad that he had to be rushed to the vet several times to be sedated and given oxygen. the vet told us that it was possible that max could die from one of these episodes and we should consider euthanizing him.
we decided to get our own oxygen tank for home so that we could treat him immediately when an attack came on. as it turned out, the oxygen did wonders for max and he came out of an episode much sooner when the oxygen was administered at the first sign of an attack.
we decided to seek out the opinion of two veterinarian specialists in rochester, who informed us that max’s condition was terminal. we also brought him to cornell university to be examined and were told us his condition was fatal and his bones would eventually crush his internal organs. not wanting to give up, we then proceeded to search country-wide for veterinarians.
we saw a happy, healthy little chihuahua that just happened to have a curved spine, a darling puppy that deserved a fighting chance. he could walk and run, wag his tail and play like any other puppy. he never showed any signs that he was in pain so we continued to seek help.
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