Sunny

Profile

4/27/06: Sunny has been with us for just about a week now. I've been waiting to get her vetted before I did an introduction so here goes.....

Sunny is a beautiful, light blonde, 16 month old bundle of Golden energy. Here's her story. Sunny initially had a family but she was rather neglected. She was left to run as a stray. At some point she met up with a German Shepherd & they ran together. Apparently animal control received many complaints about them running but were never able to catch up with them until now. Unfortunately it was too late for the shepherd though, which had been shot. When Sunny came into the shelter her family was contacted but they elected to abandon her so RAGOM was contacted. Now Sunny is safe, in a loving home, & where her medical needs will be addressed.

Sunny was vetted as a puppy & had a potential diagnosis of ectopic ureters, which is a congenital malformation of the ureters not attaching properly to the bladder, thus urine leaks through vaginal tissue. When Sunny was at the shelter her bedding was consistently wet. Since she has been in foster care we have seen little of this. We have been crating her at night & her bedding was wet the first 2 nights, but dry since. She has free roam of the house during the day & evening & we haven't seen any leaking. Sunny potties outside appropriately, no accidents inside whatsoever. The vet thinks it may instead be a sphincter problem where the muscle that holds in the urine relaxes too much as she sleeps & thus she bed wets. We will start her on a med for that & see if it helps. If it doesn't then she will need a cystoscopy to look inside to see where the problem may be coming from. If it is the ectopic ureters she will eventually require surgery to correct that. A few other issues also came up at the vet. While we were there Sunny had an irregular & slow heart rate (especially considering how excited she was). They did an EKG but it was inconslusive. After we got home the vet called with lab results...everything was normal EXCEPT for her heartworm....so our sweet girl is heartworm positive. Back to the vet we went this morning ... Sunny got another EKG & a chest x-ray. Luckily her heartworm was caught fairly early & is still on the mild end so she got her first treatment today. Now the challenge will be trying to keep her quiet. Too much activity increases her heart rate & thus how hard her heart pumps, which in turn increases the risk of the big dead worms causing a clot, which in turn can go to her lungs and...the rest we won't talk about!! She'll get another heartworm treatment in 30 days. After that we will repeat the chest x-ray & then address the urine issue & also get her spayed. Too much for one sweet young girl to go through!!

Now for the fun stuff...Sunny is a beautiful light blonde Golden girl. She weighs in at 60 lbs of love. She needs to work on her manners as she loves to jump up to greet & pulls HARD on the leash. My Gentle Leader was misplaced & just got replaced today so we'll try that tomorrow. Sunny gets along nicely with my 2 Goldens & 1 Golden mix, & with my 3 kids (ages 3, 9 & 12). She could go to a home with young kids if they are dog savvy & will reinforce good manners with her. I'm not sure about cats as her history is sketchy & we don't have any. Sunny sleeps the whole night in the kennel without a peep, doesn't counter surf, nor get into the garbage. She also doesn't chew inappropriately but she will occasionally steal one of my daughters stuffed animals to carry around. She loves playing fetch, but doesn't always give it up. With her history of running she should probably have a fenced yard or if unfenced be with another dog that knows its boundaries. We have invisible fencing (which we don't train our foster dogs to) and since our dogs stay in the yard Sunny sticks with them. Sunny is truly a diamond in the rough.

Sunny will be considered as unavailable until she is through with her medical treatment. If you are interested in her let your placement advisor know as she is worth the wait. If you would like to contribute to her medical costs, any amount is appreciated. Our address is:

Retrieve a Golden of Minnesota, P.O. Box 5567, Hopkins, MN, 55343-0492, or go to the Network For Good web site (copy and paste the address below into your browser):

http://partners.guidestar.org/controller/searchResults.gs?action_donateReport=1&partner=networkforgood&ein=41-1856124