I purchased a Yorkshire Terrier from Pawsitively Pets in Scarborough Maine July 3, 2011. I had technically bought him June 30, but wasn't allowed to take him home until the 3rd due to him needing his vaccinations and to be checked by their vet. When I finally brought him home I was so happy! About 16 hours later, I awoke covered in the poor puppy's feces and him non-responsive. I thought it was because he was hypoglycemic so I gave him some honey and thought nothing of it. He bounced back, was barking and jumping everywhere. I thought I fixed the problem and that would be the end of it. About 8 hours later, it happened again. I called the emergency vet, by this time is was the 4th of July and the regular vet was closed. I rushed him down to the emergency vet in scarborough, Maine Veterinary Referral Center. They took him out back right away.
When the vet came to see me after what felt like forever, she told me they had to do "life saving procedures" on the table, and he had officially died and they brought him back. She asked me where I got him and so I told her. She told me that was the 2nd or 3rd yorkie she had seen in the last week and a half that suffered the same fate from that pet store. She said the puppy was unfit for sale, he had pneumonia, an upper respiratory infection, and was hypoglycemic. He needed to stay the night and be kept on an IV to keep his blood sugar balanced. That was the first 800 I spent in vet bills. I couldn't afford to keep him there anymore than a day, so at 8 in the morning on July 5, I picked him up, promising to bring him to a normal vet for a check up and further instructions. I did just that, however they suggested that he continue hospital care with an IV and it would cost me around 500 per day. Now, I had just spent 800 in vet bills that morning, and the day before that I had spent 1050 on the puppy itself. I was hurting financially. I told them about my situation and the vet pretty much wished me good luck and sent me on my way. They had given me a high fat soft food to help him gain weight (he weight a pound and 12 ounces) and it would help him keep his sugar where it needed to be.
After the bleak outcome from the vet, I drove this poor defenseless little puppy back to the pet store and demanded they take it back. I was not going to let this poor little guy die on me, in my arms. I wasn't about to watch that. They refused. Stating that I needed to mail in the proper paperwork to the contract place and they would do something for me when I did that. That obviously didn't help me in the mean time, and the poor little guy would probably die waiting for the stupid paperwork to get where it had to go. I begged and pleaded. But, they did nothing, and I had to leave that store puppy in hand.
I'm a young girl, I was 20 at the time, and I still lived at home with my grandparents. My grandmother was so furious that I had spent all of this money on this puppy, it was very ill, and they refused to do anything about it. After a very heated battle over the phone with the owner, Ryan Cheplic, they agreed to help me. I brought the puppy back in and they gave it a nebulizer treatment to help with its breathing. One of the employees there was going to school to become a veterinarian, so she agreed to take him for the night and feed him every 2 hours. He absolutely refused to eat for me, and I didn't think she was going to have much luck either. The next day, he was still alive. She kept him the next night as well and for the next week, I brought him in a couple of times a day for nebulizer treatments.
When the contract place finally got my paperwork, they told me I could either give the puppy back and get a full refund, get a different puppy, or keep the puppy and they would reimburse me half of what I paid for him for vet bills. I chose reimbursement of half of the purchase price. I had grown so attached to him, the 4 days that he had to stay there, I visited 3 times a day and I was going to love this little guy until he died.
When I finally got him back, the employee told me her trick to get him to eat; watering down the high-fat soft food so that it could be sucked up through a syringe. And force feeding him 2-3 syringes every 2 hours. So, for the next month and a half, that's what I did, along with Clavamox, a liquid antibiotic.
That was only the first scare with Miles. Since then, I have spent $10,000 in vet bills for numerous visits. He has had to have IVs 4-5 times, and had many overnight stays at the ER. After a lot of heartache, and an anxiety filled year, at the beginning of April 2012, he was diagnosed with a port-systemic shunt on his liver.
This type of shunt carries most of his blood around his liver, instead of being filtered through his liver. Because of this, his blood becomes toxic, and he cant keep food down, he paces until exhaustion, has seizures, and gets psychosis. We began treatment, which consists of 3 different medications, Lactulose, read more
