Featured Here: Abby (special needs)

Adoptable dog Abby has Addison's disease. Find out how you can help below.

Sponsor a Pet That Touches Your Heart

Pet Welfare and The Petfinder.com Foundation offer a program that allows you to sponsor a homeless pet that has touched your heart, but which, for some reason, you can't adopt at this time. It costs an average of $180 to provide care for a pet while she waits for a home. This can dramatically increase with special needs animals’ vet care. You can start by sponsoring a pet that melts your heart on Petfinder.com! Your contribution of just $10 may enable a pet to receive care until a new loving family comes along. They all deserve this chance. Contributions are collected and distributed to Pet Welfare by the Petfinder.com Foundation and are tax deductible as allowed by law. In the event that the pet you select receives numerous sponsorships or is no longer available for adoption at the time your donation is received, Pet Welfare may apply donations to ongoing needs for the other pets in its care.

Adoptable dog Abby is one such example: she has Addison's disease (you can read more about Abby below). However, Abby is not our only special-needs pet we have available here at the shelter. Cats Sheeba, Murphy, Stripe, Mary, Lefty, Ernie, Star, & Evie would all benefit from a donation and/or sponsorship.

How to Sponsor

1. Go to our Petfinder Listing Link
2. Click on the Dog or Cat you might be interested in sponsoring

   **Consider sponsoring one of our older or special needs dogs/cats whose chances of finding a home are harder**

3. Find the pink/purple heart that say "Sponsor Me!" and click this link
4. Fill out information required to set-up a PetFinder visitor account
5. Select the amount you want to sponsor
6. Enter payment information

You will receive an email confirmation.

Printable Sponsor Instructions

Thank you for making a difference in a homeless animal’s life!

Support for Sweet Abby: Causes.com

Abby was surrendered to Pet Welfare early last year as her family had lost their home and couldn’t keep her anymore. She was originally adopted by the family to help their young son cope with the chemo therapy he needed for his cancer. He loved Abby and she him. It was a very sad day when they had to give her up. She was adopted by a family who kept her for about 9 months. She was returned as they said she had started urinating in the house and was being a little overpowering to their dog. Little did we know that apparently Abby was in the beginning stages of Addison’s disease. One of the symptoms is loss of kidney function.

Abby was taken to the vet last Thursday when she became very lethargic, stopped eating, had very runny stool, and she barely had the strength to stand. She spent 6 days at the vets and they ran several tests.

It has been determined that she definitely has Addison’s Disease. It means that her adrenal glands are not producing corticols (commonly called cortisone or steroids) that her body needs for general functioning. One cortisol that is easy to replenish is the steroids found in Prednisone. Keeping her on Prednisone will help, but for optimal treatment she needs a Percorten Injection every 25-30 days. Because of her size she needs 2.4 ml every 25 days. One vial only has 4 mls in it, so one vial @$219.37 is just over 1 ½ doses. The injections are given at the veterinarians office because they are given in the muscle. She would need about 7 vials/year (roughly $1,550/year in meds). Obviously, Abby will need these shots the rest of her life.

Abby's medications are going to cost a lot of money but all I can think of is that Abby was there for the young man when he was going through cancer treatment, now it’s our turn to be there for Abby as she goes through this. We all know she is such a sweet girl. If you can make a donation to help cover Abby's medications you can help save her life!

Support Abby on Causes.com >>

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Adoptable dog Abby has Addison's Disease. You can help Pet Welfare afford her medication by donating to her cause on Causes.com