Rescue Tails Animal Welfare: COVID-19 Operation Grant Report

How did this grant help your organization and the pets in your care?

We had a paralyzed foster who needed emergency cystotomy surgery. The money went to help pay a portion of the bill.

We had an emergency to cover the bill for a cystotomy on one of our paralyzed foster dogs. It was just when Covid hit full-force and everything was shut down. It really helped to have some additional funds to cover a portion of the unexpected bill.

How many pets did this grant help?

One, Oliver.

Please provide a story of one or more specific pets this grant helped.

Oliver is a rear-paralyzed dog who came to our rescue as an owner-relinquish through an open-access city facility. They said the family was moving and couldn’t take him to the new apartment. As with many paralyzed pups, he is prone to urinary-tract infections. In Oliver’s case, he requires bladder expression. He was urinating blood and what we thought was a simple UTI turned out to be a lot of stones clogging his urethra. We had to take him in for emergency surgery.

His bill was higher than other dogs’ because he needed to be catheterized after surgery while his stitches healed. The money came in at a time when everyone was hunkered down and no one was thinking about donations to rescues. We were really grateful to use it for him!

We also had gotten a family surrender at the same time of one of our adopters who passed of Covid. We had planned to use the money for her initial vetting, but we moved the allocated funds to Oliver’s emergency surgery. Oliver had a recent bladder stone recurrence setback, which we hope is clear. He is not yet adopted, but we hope we can have him up and about to start interviewing for his future family soon! Meet Oliver here.