Tundra’s Story

Here is a story of a miracle that happened to enter my life.  Her name is
Tundra.

     She was found in the ditch, hit by a car and was left there for dead.
The vet that she was originally brought to did not want to do anything 
because "she was to far gone" The vet estimated she only had about half an
hour to live when she was brought in, that if we found her a half an hour
later we would have found a dead dog instead.  Me and this girl that I am
helping rescue huskies and Malamutes convinced the vet to do his best to
save her no matter what the cost was.  

     She had to be fed directly into the blood as she was too weak to 
digest food at all.  When we found her she weighed 20 pounds, majority 
dehydrated, and had lost a lot of blood.  Well, needless to say, after 
about $3500.00 worth of medical treatments, which does not include vet time
as the vet donated all the time, the full bill would have been well over
$5000.00 if he hadn't donated all his time to her, she is back up to 60
pounds, and she is doing very well, the vet estimated that she will have
a full recovery, the only visible scar will be 2 holes in her tongue, 
one on each side as she had her tongue out when she got hit and she bit
it.  She also has a broken right front leg.  It is expected to fully heal
so there will be no signs that it was broke as when I brought her in to 
the vet last week her x-rays showed that it is healing perfectly.  She also
had several bruised ribs and various cuts and scrapes from nose to tail.

  They are all healed and the fur is starting to grow back now. Her ribs
are no longer hurting.

     She is so sweet and well behaved, she also has been through at least
basic obedience training  as she knows all the basic commands and some 
more, still working to find out just how much she knows.  I can not believe
that somebody would hit her and just leave her there to die.  We think 
that it was the owners that hit her as she did have a collar, you could 
see the mark from it, but it was removed when we found her, and we 
advertised for months trying to find them, we went as far as to knock on 
all the doors of the houses in the neighborhood that she was found in, 
but no luck on finding her original owners, therefore Tundra is not her 
original name, we will never know it, but she seems to like the name allot.

     I believe that she is well worth the money and time that we all spent 
saving her life, and I sure am glad that she is with me as I will give her
the best home she has ever had and I will never let anything bad happen 
to her again. Both me and my vet believe that she is nothing short of a 
miracle, and that she was meant to come into my life, as I have been 
looking for a husky or malamute for a while now, and I said a short prayer
asking for the good lord to help me find the perfect dog, and now I have 
her, as she is more than perfect for me.

Update on Tundra:   (Part II)
The cast is almost ready to come off.  She has another appointment on 
the 11th of Feb to have her leg x-rayed again to see if it can come off,
 and for a nose to tail checkup.  and to have her teeth checked as I think
 that she has a bad tooth as once in a while she will be in pain any time
 she smells something or takes a bite of food, so I had to put her on 
canned food for now, but hopefully on the 11th that will be taken care of.
  The last x-ray that she had was a week and a half ago and it showed that
 the leg is healing perfectly, but there is a "V" shaped chip where it is
 healing and we  decided that it would be best to let it heal before we 
take the cast off because it would make her bone weak due to the shape of
 the chip, but when it is fully healed there will be no sign that it was 
ever broke. Other than that she has no other medical problems.  I also 
found out that she is obedience trained, she knows how to sit, lay down,
 shake hands.  I am still finding things that she knows, but will never
 know exactly how she was trained due to the way I got her.        
             
Update on Tundra (Part III)

Her cast came off last Friday.  We went to Richmond on Saturday to attend
an all day pet expo.  It was fun and she had a great time.  She took 
the K-9 good citizen test, which she passed text book perfect, so she 
is now a AKC registered K-9 good citizen, and as soon as she gets her 
strength back in her leg the test evaluator will come and perform the 
certification for her to become a certified therapy dog.  He said that 
the way she performed during the good citizen test, and after a few extra
tests, he said that either she was trained for it or she naturally has
all the traits for it, which will be a first for him, he has never seen
one that did not have to go through the training.  But he said that she
would pass all the tests very easily, but the rules state that the dog
can not limp during the test so I will have to wait until she has her
strength back in her leg before I get her tested.  He believes that 
she was a therapy dog at one time, but  somehow ended up in that ditch
where we found her, which he could not believe that somebody would do
that to such a sweet and loving dog.

Update on Tundra (Part IV)
She is doing great!!!!!!  I took her to the vet for her final check up
last week and she came out with a full bill of health and the vet said
that she is now up to full strength and her leg is almost fully healed,
it still has some cartilage on the bone where it was broke, but it will
slowly go away. She is still about 30 lbs. under weight as she still has
quit a bit of "flab" as I call it, or loose skin where she needs to 
"grow in to it".  But, she is gaining weight slowly, but now that her cast
is off, she lost 2 lbs. last week, but that is to be expected as she is 
more active now, but she will start to gain weight as she gets used to the
more activity. 

Tundra can be reached at tundra6@dog.com