When we first told you about Cookie’s rescue in January, she had just been found at a garbage dump and was in heartbreaking condition. We did everything we could to help her when she came to us and we thought she would get her happily ever after ending, but we would only later find out how badly she had been physically damaged by a dog breeder. Now, we hope her story will help raise awareness about the importance of adopting, and spaying and neutering animal companions. 

When we heard about Cookie from another rescuer, we rushed to help. When we got to her, she was so weak she could not stand, weighing only 1.6 pounds. Her body temperature was low, her gums stark white and she was so weak she could not hold her head up. We turned on the seat heater in the vehicle we took to get her and rushed home. We placed her on a heating pad and gave her tiny bites of food. She was so hungry!

Our first thought was she had been used as a breeder dog, but we found what appeared to be a spay scar on her abdomen. At that point we could not imagine how such a tiny dog was wandering around a garbage dump almost dead.

Her recovery was slow, but she began to gain weight and was feeling better. She was very shy, but she finally came around and began to follow Hope Animal Sanctuary’s director everywhere. She loved to ride in the car on the many errands we have to run at the Sanctuary.

Much to our surprise, a few months later Cookie came into heat! When our veterinarian spayed her, questions about her past were finally answered. He found the scar was where this precious, tiny dog had multiple C-sections. Too small to give birth naturally, her uncaring guardian bred her many times and each time she had surgery to remove the pups. Instead of having her spayed, they kept breeding her over and over and performing surgery each time.

Our veterinarian was shocked at the condition of her insides. There were so many adhesions from all of those surgeries that everything was basically fused together. A simple spay turned into a major surgery, but Cookie was a fighter and recovered within a few days. By that time, she weighed 9.8 pounds.

Sadly, two months later Cookie began to vomit when she ate. Some days she would eat and be fine and the next day she would eat and throw up. Our veterinarian tried everything but she continued to go downhill and continued losing weight. Within two weeks she weighed 6.4 pounds.

Her blood work looked good but an X-ray showed what appeared to be a huge mass in her abdomen. Our veterinarian performed surgery and found that Cookie’s intestines were twisted and growing together again from the scar tissue. The damage to her little body was too extensive to repair, and even though we loved Cookie, we had to make a decision no one should ever have to make and had her euthanized — we could not allow her to suffer as she had been.

Cookie suffered tremendously just because a breeder wanted to profit from her puppies. We’re grateful we were able to provide her with a few months of happiness before we lost her, but we hope her story will help people realize how important it is to spay and neuter our animal companions, and how important it is to adopt — instead of encouraging greedy breeders to exploit dogs like this. 

Cookie was saved and experienced love, possibly for the first time in her short life, because you donated to In Defense of Animals. Please consider a donation in honor of Cookie, who deserved so much more than she got from humans so we can save more like her from meeting a similarly heartbreaking fate.