I'm more than sick as well.
Before the holiday of a life time ( nearly six week touring around Europe dragging out 4 bed shed ) we sought out as many kennels as we could find in a 30 mile area . Had a look at them all and ended up with only two to go back to , the one we initally decided on said sorry we cannot do it as there is a fully booked list for three days in the middle of the period .
they only kennel dogs and do not breed them nor do they rehome them .
second place was looking good .. an RSPCA vehicle was there taking two very skinny sheepdogs into the reception building .. the dogs were in a rweal mess , coveren in excrement aqnd showing ribs you could have played the national anthem on.
We had a good look round ..not all pens were full bit they were dry and clean , no real nasty stink etc etc.
Things looked good the people had a breeding establishment and out nin a well wired in barn and yard area were several young pups yapping and prancing around.
On this information we left Merle there secure in the knowledge he would be looked after . The owners even said they would specially buy in his diet of Skinners Rough and Ready for him and feed him the two meals a day of two of our scoops each time .
We also provided a vet bedding blanket and a kong extreme chew thingy for his stay .. lots of assurances were given as to his great time he would have. He weighed 31 Kg a fortnight earlier at the vets when we took him for his Kennel cough vaccination & to get him a front line flea treatment and a decent wormer down his neck .
When we returned & went to collect to collect the dog the next morning , Merle let out a long drawn out howl as he recognised the car and my daughters voice. .... something he has never done before.
he cried into my hands when his pen was opened , he smelt of rotting something and looked much thinner than when we took him. he looked ass if he needed a bath .
I took him to the caged cargo areaof the KIA and had to help put him in the car as he was shaking and unsure. at geting in .
My lass paid whilst I did this . On getting home I checked him for fleas ( he been Front lined the day before going to the kennel ) and found him quite hot , his fore legs were full of thick matted hair that stank to high heavens .. I stripped off bunged on some shorts and took him into our wetroom and gave him a ( vet prescribed ) medicated shampoo , as I did this I noticed several sores on him and that he had no claws to speak of, his elbows were devoid of hair, he was runnig a temperature.
Once shampooed and gently dried I noticed he had no toe nails on any of his feet they were worn to almost the quick and there were several circles on his pads wht had been healed leaving rings where something had occured.
I rang the vet and got an appointment for the next morning .
Merle had a very high temp[erature and weighed only 24,4 kg the vet estimated he'd lost over 6 kg thats 13.2 pounds in old money .
The vet gave him a real good examination and said she was disgusted that he'd ben kept in a kennels and not been taken to a vet . he was not only suffering a high temp & been half starved he was also very very dehydrated and would have been very very ill in another few days or so.
He's now had a course of antibiotics and in ten days has put back on six pounds in weight . his temp had settled .
The sores have healed but the bare elbows are still balder than me.
That stinking stuff on his front legs was saliva in his hair wherer he had licked at sore places leaving him with a skin infection ..it is slowly starting to lift out as his hair regrows ..each day I gently comb him out and the pile of brown matted hair is getting smaller it now is only a big jaffa size.
He won't leave my side , he's getting three meals aday of 200 grm each meal plus a codliver oil capsule every other day and has also been re frontlined and re wormed ..poor little bugger was full of worms ... god only knows what he'd been fed or where theybhad been keeping him for his vet bed blanket was not chewed up he usually gets through one every month , he also demolishes a kong extreme every six weeks .. the one we sent with him was on top of a cage out side the main kennel block and untouched .
Our vet told us of the days when she was trying to get animal experience in place to help her become a vet.. one lady made up three meals aday for her goldie and put them in heat sealed bags with the dogs name on them and each days date .. the vet said a soon as the lady went out the gate the owner of the kennels threw the lot in the 1 tonne industrial wheelie bin and said the dog gets this .. which was about a cheap and nasty a dry dog food you could ever buy unless you had it specially made for you ... it was a very poor maintenence diet for an old dog formula.
I live in South Wales and if this is the standard of registered kennels god help the poor mutts.
Breeding set ups are even worse as we found out after buying a goldie four years ago aged 9 weeks old .. We got a dog ( JET _ that initally looked as though it belonged to the farm house we visited to buy him ( pedigreed at that if I wanted to pay extra )
he always seemed to not want to play and bounce around loike a loon as my other goldies have always done.
At seven months old his hips were so shallow they would not support him he had had six leg dislocations front and rear just walking to 7 from school 450 mtrs away and back , the vet reckoned he was at least 10 months old for when he was castrated at this seven month point his tackle was that of a very mature dog , one of the biggest he'd ever seen so said the vet ..
We tried using things from the vet such as a high protein medicated diet to speed up bone growth but at just over ten months old after three more dislocations we had him put down his hips & shoulders were severely arthritic and creaking , he was in tremendous pain most of the time.
I took him to the vet the day after we purchased him , he had to be treated for a strange kidney infection and despite being assured he had been treated with a prescribed wormer a few days earlier he shat kitting needle lengths of them for two days after the vets dosage of wormer for he found them in a lump in his gut.
After we had had him put down I got a bit morbid and started looking at some pictures of him that we took at the farm house when the penny suddenly dropped.. close to the kennel shed was a sheep trailer ,the floor showed it was covered in vast amounts of yellow excrement & some reddish regurgitated food .
.. sheep s**t is green .. Jet had been shipped in from a puppy farm and he'd been the runt of an earlier litter and had been shoved in with the litter being sold.
