Callie the Wonder Dog and her unbendable front legs

At the start of last week our whole family jumped in the car and drove to the airport to pick up our newest family member Callie, an 8 week old Bull Arab x Staffy puppy. We found her through the amazing PetRescue website where she was listed by the organisation SAFE (Save Animals From Euthanasia). She was located in Albany and so she was put on a plane and flown to us. We had seen pictures of her (obviously) and we were quite smitten by this beautiful little girl before we even met her, but once we met her in person we all fell completely in love with her! Well everyone except 4 year old Jack Russel x Maltese Shitzu, Bella.

To begin with she was shy and placid and absolutely adorable! After a few days of getting used to her new family and her new home she came out of her shell! She is still placid and adorable but is now much more playful. She is the sweetest natured puppy I have ever met, and just loves to cuddle and snuggle!

Then on Monday we noticed she was holding her front left paw a bit funny, we thought maybe she had hurt it playing and decided to keep an eye on it over night and the next day. The following morning she was still holding it funny and had begun to limp slightly. I noticed her limping get worse through out the day and when the Husband Shaped Person returned home from work I told him I thought we needed to take her to the Vet. Not realising the Vet was open until 7pm we resolved to take her the following morning.

On Wednesday the Vet took one look at her and said she had a genetic defect which caused the bones in her legs to grow at different rates. He said he had seen it before and that if left untreated her legs would continue to turn outwards until she became a cripple and could no longer walk. He said he knew of cases where it became so bad that the dogs had to be put down. He told us he was going to fit splints to her front legs to help keep them straight while her bones grew and this would hopefully fix the problem.

We had to leave her at the vets to have the splints attached and as we were walking out to the car we both turned to each other and said "she's not being put down!". In just over a week Callie has become an intrinsic part of our family and we will do anything we can to help her through this.

Sadly Callie's 5 brothers and sisters may also have the same genetic defect and upon talking to SAFE Albany I have discovered that none of the other puppies have yet been adopted. They will all be taken to the vet today to get checked out but they may not yet be showing the physical symptoms of the defect. If the puppies can't be found homes with people who understand that they may need a lot of medical care, and they do in fact have the genetic defect then Mikaela from SAFE Albany will have to try and pay for treatment on all of the puppies affected.

And so I finally come to my point, if you feel you have the love and resources to adopt a puppy that may need extra medical treatment then please contact me at its.me.tif@gmail.com and I can put you in touch with Mikaela. Also if you would like to make a monetary donation to help us with Callie's treatment we would be so grateful as we are not a rich family by any means but will do everything we can to help our beautiful girl (please click the donate button over on the right) Any money we receive that is above and beyond what Callie needs for treatment will be donated to SAFE to help them continue the amazing work they do.