I first learned about Belle from her now previous family late in 2009. Her person contacted me to ask about us taking Belle into our program. Well as usual we were full and I had to ask her to wait. After receiving Belle’s owner information questionair I saw people that truly cared about their Boston. They simply thought they were out of options to help her and could not afford to keep up with her vet bills. From their description of her problem I thought she had a simple food allergy. They told me that she had a reoccuring rash on her hind side and ear infections.  I gave her advice based on what she told me her vet had told her. I suggested she stop feeding Belle commercialy processed corn and preservative filled food. I told her to clean Belle’s ears more often. She said she did not know she should. She said they would try the food change and keeping Belle’s ears clean. A month or two later she emailed me again and said Belle was not better and her hind end was a mess again and she seemed to be in pain. They could not afford to take her to the vet for a big vet bill just before Christmas. At that time I made arraingments for Belle to come to us right away.

We took Belle to our Chesapeake Vet on the way from picking her up. Right away Dr Mitchell said Belle’s anal glands were in horrible shape and her ears were badly infected. The ears I knew because they were even bright red on the outside when I picked her up. Dr Mitchell cleaned Belle’s anal glands, which she said were badly impacted and infected. She treated her with infusion threapy and we made an apointment to come back in 10 days to check her again and give the antibiotics a chance to work. Dr Mitchell said that the former vet had not treated her glands and never told her people what needed to be done. They had simply given her antibiotics again and again. This is not to say the vet was horrible, not all vets see anal gland problems often or really know what needs to be done. It’s a big reason we always tell people to go to vets that see many of their dogs breed so they have a better understanding of their unique needs.
Well we took Belle in several times until we had her anal glands in good shape. Well good enough that we thought she would not need the specialized surgery to remove her anal glands. We’ve done everything for Belle we can and it’s not enough without this complicatied and very expensive surgery.

Now we have to do the surgery so Belle won’t constantly need pain and antibiotic meds and can live a normal life with people that love her. Belle needs a chance and we need help to pay for her surgery which will cost about $1.000.00 this in addition to the hundreds we’ve already spent on test, her full set of shots, her micro chip and all the meds she’s needed.