Rescue Group uses System Saver with great results

Rescue Group uses System Saver with great results

Welcome Home Sanctuary is an all-breed rescue, rehoming and rehabilitation organization. We specialize in ElderDogs and Special Needs, providing sanctuary for a limited number of dogs. We work closely with several municipal shelters and no-kill shelters to prevent needless euthanasias and to get dogs into their forever homes. The sanctuary currently has over 30 dogs who live as house dogs in our homes and foster homes. Here are just a few of our success stories using System Saver.

BLUE BOO Beagle Mix with Cushings

System Saver has helped Blue-Boo the most. She is a 10 year old Beagle mix with Cushings. The shelter she came from gave her too much Lysodren, which immediately threw her into an Addisonian crisis on top of her “normal Cushings existence. Swollen belly, lack of energy, lack of interest in things or in her surroundings. Trouble breathing if she went too many yards on a walk. I started giving her SS while she was still on the Lysodren (which is a DDT derivative!!!!!) and weaned her off of the Lysodren slowly as she started to improve with the SS. Now, I haven’t had a new bloodwork ACTH stim test done on her, but clinically here is how she presents when on SS only: She has more energy; no more huffing and puffing; interested in everything; belly less pendulous and swollen; bright eyes; and she doesn’t want to go home when she gets a nice walkie!

TUCKER Husky/Lab mix with Heart Worm

The next dog that really responded to SS was Tucker. Tucker is a totally blind and half-deaf 12-15 year old husky/lab mix from the South. He came to our door with MAJOR heartworm infection, so bad that my vet would not even consider the “fast” treatment for HW on the assumption that his age, condition, and the severity of his case would cause him to throw a clot if treated quickly. When he arrived, he was way too thin, uninterested, and very slow on his feet. Aside from his monthly HW treatments, he wasn’t really on anything else. I put him on SS immediately and he began to take an interest in things, decided to seek out attention from my husband and myself, stake out his territory within the Sanctuary pack, and has gained confidence and “a spark” for lack of another term. He is a dear love, and everything about him has improved. In the beginning of his stay here, I wasn’t sure we wouldn’t lose him to the heartworms. Now, I know he can beat it because he seems to want to.

BOBO Mini-Poodle withPancreatitis and Alopecia

BoBo is an apricot mini-poodle who saw his human Mom die, then wound up in a home that really wanted to do right by him, but they just weren’t dog people and they couldn’t make it work. He is going to be 17 soon. He has a tendency toward pancreatitis, and then suddenly started developing alopecia on his ears, lower legs and back. He went on SS and the alopecia completely reversed itself. He hasn’t has a bout of pancreatitis since beginning the SS. He also is more interested in life in general. Nothing else changed in his daily routine, so I can only say it has to be the SS.

MS ELLA PITZGERALD Boxer Mix with luxated joints

Next is Ms. Ella Pitzgerald. Miss Ella is all wrong. That is, she came to us with every joint that could be luxated, luxated. Bad breeding. Her elbows, knees, etc., all stick out at odd angles, making it difficult for her to walk. But she was also withdrawn. With the SS, she gets up, goes out on the deck for the sunshine, protects her little basket bed, gets out of ANY sweater we try to put on her, and bays in the AM with the other dogs to get me out of bed!! We had never heard her voice before the SS. She came to us at an estimated age of 14-15, and that was about 2 years ago. She is a scream. She can even roll on her back for a good old fashioned self-back rub with the help of SS.

POPPY GSD with bad back

Finally, there’s Poppy. Poppy wound up in a kill shelter at the tender age of 14-15 years old. He is a purebred German Shepherd dog. But since coming here, he’s had to have a partial tail amputation. We put him right on SS. He has a bad back, like a lot of Elder GSD’s. He’s deaf except at very high frequencies, and he has a tendency to be a bit mouthy, I think to compensate for his other communications deficits. The SS seems to have given him more energy, made him more outgoing, less mouthy, and generally more companionable. He also seems to respond to lower frequencies when we speak to him, which means we no longer have to address him like minnie mouse!! He is a beautiful soul and a sweet man, and whatever happened to him, as all the others, he surely did not deserve.

MABEL dog with anaplasmosis

Oh, there’s one more dog - Mabel (we call her Able Mable). Some months after we took her into Sanctuary, she wound up with anaplasmosis (she may have had it all along). We treated her with the usual course of antibiotics, but now we keep her system up with SS and she seems to be mighty fine. So there you have it.

~ Morgana