Octavia Goes Home

Octavia was only supposed to be at our rescue for a few days last August. That plan drastically changed … for the better. 🙂

Octavia and her younger sister, Cricket, were abandoned at the kill shelter by their parents. Another rescue pulled them and asked us to give them a layover before they were transported up north.

Cricket was a purebred brown-and-white JRT, healthy and happy. She left quickly as planned and has found her forever home. But Octavia was not ready to travel. She was much older (around 10-11 years old). Her teeth were rotten, she couldn’t see well in bright daylight because of cataracts, she had a cyst on her chest, and she was very weak. The thought of putting her in a van and hoping for the best was something Mama Donna was not prepared to do. We needed to heal her first.

As it turned out, the healing took awhile. We took her for a dental, and, unfortunately, she had to lose every single one of her teeth to get healthy. The first couple of days were rough, but she wasn’t about to let that hold her back. Without toxins in her bloodstream, she quickly grew strong and feisty and had absolutely no problem woofing down soft food. We also had the benign cyst removed, and were hoping that was the end of her health challenges. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

We had concerns about her and had some extensive bloodwork done in March. It showed the signs of early renal failure, most likely from never having had a dental. We resigned ourselves to the fact that she would spend her golden years with us in our sanctuary. We hoped for a foster, but were realistic … and then …

Enter Jeff and Cathy Carelson of Florida … They drove all the way to Atlanta to help us on Spring Vol Day a couple of weeks ago. And help they did! They worked tirelessly from start to finish, and we couldn’t have accomplished what we did in one day without their help.

They had lost their beautiful JRT girl, Matell, and were still hurting, but were ready to look for another pup to take home. They met all of our young and healthy babies, but they fell in love with Octavia. (She does that to people.) They knew her situation and they didn’t care: They wanted to give her the best life possible.They have been doing lots of research on diets and medications and plan to give our toothless wonder girl the best years of her life.

She left the rescue ranch yesterday and has already settled into her little paradise in Florida. Here’s Mom’s post from their first night together. It says it all. Thank you so much to Jeff and Cathy for giving this girl such an amazing life. Also, thank you to Linda Jardine for sponsoring her all of these months. She has changed us all forever.