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Ladysmith celebrates Light Up this Thursday
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
LSS senior girls headed to provincials P. 15
P. 3
Puppies rescued near Ladysmith doing well Lindsay Chung
THE CHRONICLE
When the BC SPCA found two terrier-cross puppies tethered outdoors in freezing temperature outside a home near Ladysmith on Nov. 17, they were severely emaciated and extremely weak. The male puppies, who are only a few months old, were being kept outside without food or water, and they weighed only two or three kilograms each, according to the SPCA. One week later, the puppies, who have been named Casey and Finnegan by SPCA staff, are heavier, stronger and playing. “I’m happy to report they are continuing to improve in our care,” BC SPCA senior animal protection officer Tina Heary said Monday morning. “They have been gaining weight. They were both so exceptionally thin. One of them was even more emaciated than the other one and was exceptionally weak when the SPCA first arrived on scene. It’s just so nice to see his strength regained. If you can imagine, they lose weight and they lose all their fat stores, and after that, they get all the muscle wasting. They’re supposed to be growing little puppies with bone development, and that’s not happening properly with nutrition. So the one little guy was exceptionally weak, and he almost looked malformed ... Whereas now, it’s just wonderful to see him ripping around and playing and being like a little puppy. They’re steadily doing better.” When the SPCA found the two puppies, they were huddled together, wet and shivering. “It was heartbreaking to see how
these little puppies were being forced to live,” Heary noted in a press release issued last week. “They were outside in the freezing cold, tangled up on tethers, emaciated, filthy, matted and covered in urine. Their only shelter was a plastic doghouse that was wet and muddy inside with no insulation or bedding.” When Casey and Finnegan first arrived at the Nanaimo SPCA, they were so flea infested that they needed to be treated for their parasites, and they were matted and filthy, so they needed to be groomed, explained Heary. Then, the veterinarian had to put them on a very carefully monitored re-feeding program. The puppies are weighed regularly to make sure they’re gaining weight, and they needed some other medications. Casey and Finnegan are expected to make a full recovery. Heary says the SPCA is very grateful to have received a number of offers from people offering to adopt the puppies, and they do have a couple of pending adoptions, but they’re not available for adoption yet because they need to be a little bit stronger. “We’re trying to remind people that there are many other dogs in our shelters up and down Vancouver Island and elsewhere in B.C. that could benefit from a new home, so people who were interested in these two, keep looking because there are so many in our shelters who have very similar sad stories and are also deserving of a new placement,” she said. “It would be great if some of these shelter animals had the ability to go home somewhere for the holidays.” See Animal Page 3
Five-year-old Audrey Johnson makes Christmas ornaments during the Christmas Pancake Breakfast With Santa Nov. 22 at the Cedar Community Hall, which was hosted by the North Oyster and Area Historical Society. For more photos, please see page 8. LINDSAY CHUNG
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