When she was rescued, Jaimie was in late stage congestive heart failure due to having a heavy load of heartworms that had stretched her heart muscle. She is now heartworm free!! Because of the damage the heartworms did to her heart, she will be on three medications for the remainder of her life, a diuretic, a blood pressure pill and a vasodilator. She is doing super!! Jaimie needs a retirement home. All she wants to do is go outside to potty and right back in to lay on the sofa and watch TV. She needs very little exercise because of her heart condition. Her ideal home would be one where her family is retired and has a doggy door so she has access to the backyard whenever she needs to go out; the diuretic makes her have to urinate often.
Jaimie’s story:
Imagine…my entire world existed within a 4-foot-x-4-foot square outdoor pen.
Day after day, year after year I turned in small circles just to get a little exercise. And I shared that small space with a dilapidated doghouse with a big hole in its roof.
I waited for someone to walk from the house where the humans live…and out to me in your little world. I waited for enough food to fill your belly. I waited for enough fresh water to quench your thirst. I waited….
I did that for 10 years, and I wondered, “Can’t the humans in the house see that I am hungry and thirsty, that I am cold in the winter, breathtakingly hot in the summer, and that I do not want to die out here…alone.”
No, they didn’t see all that. Instead…..they moved out of the house and left me to starve to death in my 4-foot-x-4-foot world.
Days, and then weeks, passed and I lay there. And then one day a human appeared. She came right up to my pen speaking softly. She gently tossed me a few dog treats. But I was too weak to even eat them. Then she did something no one had done in a very very long time. She opened the gate and came inside my little pen.
She wrapped her arms around my bony, dirty body and lifted me up, wrapped a leash around my neck and helped my wobbly legs climb into her truck. I just stared at this angel and got so excited, I suddenly felt more alive than I had in years!
Hearts of Gold Pit Rescue took me in and they’ve showered me with kindness and love, and everyday I do my best to give them lots of tail wags in return. My foster mom didn’t quite know what to do with me at first. That’s because all I knew to do was walk in circles inside a small pen. She had to teach me how to walk in straight lines! I’ve learned how to play too! The most fun is when my foster mom brings home goodies people have donated to Hearts of Gold dogs and she lets me forage through it all until I find my favorite thing. A bully stick to chew! And you’d think I was part Hound Dog the way I can sniff out the smallest morsel of food in the smallest of spaces anywhere in the house.
I also love to curl up and nap on the couch. Me! On a couch in a house with humans! My foster mom says I’m a sweet ole gal. I don’t know what that means, but I do know now what it means to feel happiness.
I wish I had many years to enjoy this happiness. I know the time is limited though. See, I heard my foster mom talking to the doggy doctor that she takes me to see. He says I have heavy heartworms inside me and I’m taking some medicine that kills them slowly so they don’t kill me fast.
He also said I have something called congestive heart failure. Sometimes my foster mom must rush me to an emergency doggy doctor because I can’t breathe well. It’s my bad heart. But I keep pulling through each crisis because I am not only a sweet ole gal, but a very brave one too! So I take medicine every day so I can keep living….one day at a time.
I am not sad about my health tho. Yes, it all could’ve been avoided if the family who abandoned me to die had taken better care of me, but thanks to Hearts of Gold, I have today. I am warm; I have a full belly; I am not alone, and I am loved.
And life really doesn’t get much better than that.