Muggs Has an Urgent Problem
Hi, my name is Muggs. I’m a Shih Tzu. My Mom is a senior citizen who lives on Social Security. She adopted me from a local rescue three years ago.
Stricken with secondary glaucoma from an old eye injury I suffered when I was a pup. A few weeks ago, out of the blue, my left eye just started hurting and swelling and now I’ve got one heck of a headache.
The Animal Support Project paid for a specialist at Upstate Veterinary Specialties to examine my eye. He says it’s got to be removed ASAP. There’s no saving it and it’s blind now. That surgery is the only way to relieve my pain but it’s gonna cost over $3,000!
I’m in good shape otherwise but the bad news is, on her limited income, Mom doesn’t have the funds to pay for this surgery. She only had $400 in the bank and she used that to get me seen by our vet before we even went to the specialist. I’m taking pain meds and eye drops to help keep me comfortable but the pressure won’t go down. And I know just looking at this eye is scaring people. I used to be a handsome little guy that the kids loved but now they run from me cuz I look like a freak.
Mom went back to the rescue that sold me to her to ask them for help. But they said they’d only help me if she surrendered me back to them! How do ya like that? The vet says it would be cheaper to put me to sleep but Mom can’t bear the thought of that. For cryin’ out loud, we’ve been together three years and it’s been just magical for both of us! We love the same TV shows, the same snacks, the same movies…….We’re made for each other! Mom could take care of my regular needs just fine. Everything was wonderful. We never dreamed my eye would explode like this! It took nearly a lifetime to find each other. I hope it doesn’t have to end so soon. That would be a heart breaker for both of us.
The Animal Support Project isn’t giving up on us and neither is Mom. She’s calling and emailing everywhere to try and find more money for my surgery. And TASP is posting my story in the hope that others who read about us will maybe donate to help save me. They’re just a small organization and COVID has really hurt them financially just like everyone else. But they know the value of relationships, two-legged and four-legged. They don’t want to see Mom and me separated, especially with the holidays coming. If you can’t donate, would you please share my story so maybe someone who can donate will learn about Mom and me and help us? The time is ticking on this bomb of an eye so I hope we can raise the funds soon. Thanks from the heart for caring and God bless!
According to his Mom, “He’s doing wonderfully, he’s back to playing with his toys and is running around outside. He is enjoying his treats again, he’s full of life.”
It’s easy to get a TASP Fantasy Photo emailed directly to your inbox and/or a print mailed to your home. Just send us an email at taspinfo@yahoo.com that includes the following:
Choose your background(s). CLICK HERE TO SEE THE BACKGROUNDS.
Attach your own photo of your subject(s) taken against a plain background. If you have multiple subjects and want them to appear in the same photo, just send us a photo of each subject separately and we’ll combine them digitally. Already been to a TASP photo clinic in the past? We can look up previous photos of your subject(s) from our archives and use them to create this month’s photo.
Let us know how you’d like to receive your photo:
Emailed .jpg photo @ $10 donation
Mailed hard copy print @ $10 donation (Be sure to supply your mailing address).
Or get both for $15 donation!
Lucite® frame for mailed photos optional @ additional $5 (covers cost of frame and mailing)
*Please be sure your email includes a phone number where you can be reached in case we need to contact you.
TASP volunteers will create your special photo and email you an invoice when it’s ready. Payment can be made through Paypal, or you can just mail TASP a check. Finished photos will be sent out within 24 hours of payment received.
With so many challenges brought about by COVID-19 and local losses from rioting, more companion animals than ever need TASP’s help to stay safe and healthy. Bringing our friends and supporters this popular activity ONLINE at this time is our way of continuing to finance our mission, while hopefully creating some much-needed smiles. As always, all proceeds are spent on supporting our community’s most vulnerable companion animals. Thanks for caring!
Right now, many folks are reading this message while still in isolation or quarantine or curfew. You may be wondering how The Animal Support Project will be dealing with the changes in all of our lives brought about by the arrival of the Novel Corona Virus and the Random Acts of Crime occurring here in the Capital region and throughout the state. Like everyone else, TASP faces some challenges ahead. We face a loss of revenue from having to temporarily call off our popular Fantasy Pet Photo fund raisers and our tag sales. Add to this an already-evidenced reduction in donations due to the financial stresses many of our supporters are facing after the State imposed mandatory shutdown of so many businesses in NY and then “vampires” decided to destroy what was left of local businesses. These are realities we can’t get around.
That being said, TASP is morphing to adapt as well as we can to continue offering the most support we can muster with available resources. For now, all personal visits to homes have been postponed. We’ve also had to curtail our activities in the local cities after dark due to curfew and the potential risk to our volunteers. That means no adoption home visits, no visits inside the homes of ailing pets. This is the way it has to be in order to reduce risk of infection or injury to our volunteers and our community. By coincidence, our list of adoptable pets is very small right now and their continued care at their foster homes is perfectly alright until the situation eases. And just because we can’t enter a pet’s home doesn’t mean we can’t help pets who need us. As long as our budget allows, we will utilize all available technologies like video, photos, messaging and facetime to confirm financial need and explore the situations of individual pets so they can be directed to whatever proper professional care we can afford. We can also use video and photos to demonstrate and instruct on preventive care practices to help our community’s pet guardians do the best they can for their best friends.
Our ability to pay for professional veterinary procedures at this time is very much in flux with funds temporarily dried up, but TASP is actively seeking grants for worthy purposes like veterinary care and continuation of our Paws2Protect program that provides free Seresto flea & tick collars to financially needy dogs and cats. We also have expanded our pet food pantry stocking program to serve TEN food pantries across Albany, Rensselaer, Washington and Bennington counties. The Paws2Protect and Hoss Fund programs continue to serve as long as resources remain available and if one of our already-submitted grants is awarded to TASP, we will introduce yet another great program to our toolkit, The Vintage Club: offering vital veterinary services specifically for senior pets.
We’ve even found a way we can still run our Fantasy Photo EASTER CLINICS completely online, with an option for a mailed hard copy photo. So if you’d like an Easter/Spring theme photo of your best friend, just scroll down and click for the lowdown on how to make it happen. We’ve posted details of this new fund raising scheme with sample backgrounds right here on the TASP website, taking orders online and accepting payment through Paypal or by check. Depending on how the reopening of NY State proceeds, we may be holiding our photo clinics online for a few more months so stay tuned!
COVID-19 is an unprecedented pandemic situation that virtually every American jurisdiction knew would occur someday. Even so, it would have been financial and logistical folly for any nation to stockpile the number of devices and supplies needed for this scale of a disaster for the 102 years since the last great epidemic, the Spanish Influenza of 1918. The incident command system shared by local, state and federal agencies as well as 1st responders, businesses, nonprofits and institutions across our nation is the modular, scalable method for efficiently and accountably answering the challenges ahead that COVID presents. TASP will do our best to add our compassion, skills, experience and elbow grease to this response to prevent the suffering of our community’s animals. It’s what TASP is trained to do and we’re up to the task.
We wish all of you reading this a safe and healthy path forward. Please be kind, be brave, be objective and be smart. We WILL get through this and we will bring our animal companions with us to a wiser, kinder world.
It is exciting to find so many good books about pet adoption on the market. Those of us who live with adopted pets know how much they mean to a family.
If you have ever opened your heart to an older pet, here’s a book you’ll want to check out:
According to William Hageman, Reporter for the Chicago Tribune, “If you read My Old Dog: Rescued Pets With Remarkable Second Acts (New World Library) and don’t want to run out to a shelter and rescue a senior pet, you have a heart of flint.” The book, written by Laura T. Coffey and photographed by Lori Fusaro, champions a sometimes-forgotten segment of the animal shelter population. It contains some truly beautiful photographs of senior dogs and a very nice resource section for folks who make older dogs a part of their life. http://www.myolddogbook.com/
Perhaps the writer of My Old Dog will follow up with an equally well-built version about senior cats? Let’s hope so. In the meantime, we have an excellent book available now, offering the latest information on Senior Cat Care. Written by Susan Easterly, Your Older Cat – A Complete Guide to Nutrition, Natural Remedies and Veterinary Care is a veritable Bible of good information for anyone whose cat is reaching its sunset years. With easy to follow tables, resource lists and helpful hints, this book will help any reader get a grip on old-cat topics like the aging process, preventive care, natural healing options, chronic diseases and senior cat nutrition. The suggested reading list is most helpful and the photos are just beautiful.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s an excellent book on how to raise a great puppy written by Dr. Sophia Yin. Dr. Yin died a few years back, but she left behind her a tremendous wealth of writings about positive methods in pet training based on the latest research. Being a veterinarian, Dr. Yin also tempers her writings with the physical drivers behind behavior. Illustrated profusely with photos and drawings that are easy to interpret, Perfect Puppy in 7 Days – How to Start Your Puppy Off Right not only can help someone raising a puppy to do it right. It also can help the owner of a young dog understand the reasons behind behaviors they may be seeing in their pet, and how they can best modify those behaviors without ruining the dog.
Since we like to be even handed in our reviews, we owe it to the felines and their families to mention an equally interesting and well-designed how-to book about cats by Pam Johnson-Bennett: Think Like A Cat – How To Raise a Well-Adjusted Cat – Not a Sour Puss From how to choose a new cat or kitten to how to kitten-proof a home to how to help your vet diagnose your cat’s ailments, this book is the one cat owners will turn to again and again over the lifetime of their cat. There’s some exceptional material in here about how to not only train a cat, but how to modify and even eliminate undesirable behaviors your cat may have developed. Personally we might have liked to have seen a few more illustrations in this book to break up the text a bit and help the more visual learners in our midst to get the message; but with so much valuable information in this book, we can forgive the lack of images and appreciate the treasure between its covers.
