www.atlantabeaglerescue.org

Wow! What a difference a couple of weeks and some rest have done for Jake. He's like a puppy!

Jake had a very bad cough when he first got into foster care - so much so that he was coughing up blood! That did not bode well for the little guy, but we got him to the vet and got him on some serious antibiotics. The love of his foster home and antibiotics made a huge difference, but he still had a nagging cough.

With the assistance of many wonderful donators we were able to get him a bronchioscopy and found that he had a level 2 (partially) collapsed trachia and basically chronic bronchitis. We were relieved it wasn't cancer or a worse trachial collapse, but we wondered how we were going to find this little guy a home with a chronic illness. He was also still very thin and coughing - not a good presentation at all! He also had another strike against him - he was a senior dog.

We started him on a narcotic cough syrup so he could get some rest, and also on some prednisone to get the inflamation down. Poor Jake was caught in a catch 22 - his trachia was inflamed, so he coughed, which inflamed his trachia, and so on. With just a week's worth of cough medicine and prednisone he's liike a different dog! He is sleeping mostly through the night now and hardly coughs during the day. His energy level, which was always good at least in the tail wagging department, is through the roof and he runs around quite happily and is very excited to see us at when we get home at night.

Jake's luck continued when a family who was not afraid of his condition or his age filled out an application. Jake was adopted on 2/9/2008!

While it is our policy to not spend extraordinary money where the prognosis is not good, we needed to find out what the plan was for Jake. Without the bronchioscopy we might have just rotated him on some antibiotics, thinking it was a resistent infection. That would not have helped him at all! This was money very well spent for a very happy ending.

Thanks to everyone who donated funds to this cause. Your support helped not only Jake directly, but our new incoming dogs indirectly because we still have funds to do their vetting.

We are going to start a special savings account that will be called JAKE'S FUND. Every rescue needs one and we are no exception.