We have 2 wonderful dogs that are both shelter rescues.

Daisy is our Jack Russell/Beagle mix which we adopted from the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington, NY 15 and a half years ago. She is a sweet girl who has given so much love over the years.

She has been quite the traveler going to Florida several times by plane and quite a few car trips to North Carolina among other places.

Luckily for us she has been a healthy dog most of her life. A few years she did give us a scare and got really sick with a very high fever, weak pulse and mysterious infection and had to be hospitalized. But our wonderful vets at the Baldwin Harbor Animal Hospital in Baldwin, NY fixed here up and gave her back to us quickly.

A year and a half ago, energetic, scrappy loveable Poochie came into our life. He has had a good life mixed with lots of hard times too.

Poochie is a Brazilian Terrier who looks very similar to Daisy. The Brazilian Terrier is one of 2 breeds native to Brazil and came about when the European settlers brought their Jack Russells to Brazil years ago and mixed them with Chihuahuas.

This little guy was found wandering the streets of Broward County, FL and taken in by a shelter there. He was about 1 year old and very dirty, thin and mangy looking. They cleaned him up and put him up for adoption. My husband’s cousin and her best friend went to the shelter to find him a dog. The workers urged them to adopt Poochie since he was about the best of the dogs at the shelter and they didn’t want to see him euthanized.

They took this little scrappy dog and named him Poochie after the name they saw on something at the pet store.

He led a pretty good life living in a nice South Beach Miami condo. Then his owner got sick and died. He was left to my husband’s cousin. She couldn’t take care of him on top of her 2 dogs, 3cats, birds and fish so she said she would bring him to NY and give him to us.

His trip to NY got delayed because he had to get up to date on his shots and because he got a bad flea infestation which needed to be cured. After lots of work he finally came to us last May.

He was scared and upset when we came to get him and ran away when we got home. He got confused and stopped after 1 street. Poochie came in the house and ran under the covers of our bed to go to sleep. He was here for good.

Daisy and Poochie got along great and things were going great. Then 1 year ago he had a 20 minute seizure 1 night. We took him to the vet and they tested him and found a weak liver plus he had some mass cell tumors (cancer.) We started doing more testing for the tumors and sonograms on his liver looking for liver disease. He ended up getting sicker and had to go to the emergency vet.

We started different meds for him. I ended up going over to the LI Center for Special Vet care in Westbury and meeting their great surgeon Dr. Hinton who removed all of the mass cell tumors successfully. And I met Dr. Donato who is an alternative vet specializing in Chinese medicine which centers on the liver being the most important organ in the body.

When you have a dog with a weakened liver, a lot of your treatment options are limited. They can’t process anesthesia or drugs will so surgery is always extra risky for them as well as radiation or chemo treatments for cancer. Our dilemma was to treat Poochie, but not to be cruel with surgeries and extreme procedures if he was going to die of cancer anyway soon.

But my regular vets and Dr. Donato worked out a great routine of alternative supplements and a change in diet that has helped Poochie tremendously although he still has very small seizures every now and then.

Daisy also developed some liver issues and they worked up a regime for her.

It has been many trips to both vets and lots of money this past year, but luckily not too much surgery or bad stuff for my dogs and they are both doing great, active and giving us an endless supply of love. We wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Tracy from NY