From Death’s Door to the Life She Fought For

When a Good Samaritan saw a small puppy abandoned and alone at a very busy intersection in New York City, they jumped into action. The poor 6-week-old puppy, later named Ava, was obviously in dire need of help, so the Good Samaritan brought her to a local police precinct.

Officers took a look at Ava and noticed how severely injured she was, prompting the case to be flagged for suspected animal cruelty. The officers then took her to an ASPCA partner veterinary hospital.

Radiographs and examination of her tiny body told a heartbreaking story.

Ava was actively bleeding from both of her nostrils and had several facial fractures in her nose, palate and skull. As a result of these fractures, she had a misalignment to her bite, causing multiple teeth to poke into her palate resulting in even more pain. She also had a deep penetrating wound near the inner corner of her eye breaching her sinuses and causing free air to leak into the space under her skin every time she took a breath.

“She was only 6 weeks old and had already endured so much trauma,” said Dr. Aubrey Crowley, an ASPCA veterinarian. “The fractures were obviously untreated, unstable and quite painful for her. She had endured a lot of suffering in such a short amount of time in her life.”

One of the veterinarians at the partner clinic closed her wounds and gave her stabilizing intensive care. She was then transferred into our care the following day to continue medical treatment.

Continuing Treatment

Upon admission to the ASPCA Animal Recovery Center, Ava was placed in our intensive care unit.

 “She was vocalizing, especially when her face was touched, which is a sign to us that she was in severe pain,” remembered Dr. Crowley. “I can only imagine what it feels like to have multiple bones in your face broken and to not be treated for that and just to experience that constant agony. Every time she tried to drink, lick, eat, it was incredibly painful for her.”

After closer examination, it was noticed that Ava had damage to the nerves in her face as a direct result of her injuries, most especially on the right side, that was affecting her ability to blink. As she was unable to fully close her right eye, she could not adequately circulate tear film across her eye, causing her cornea to become very dry and ulcerated. Corneal ulcerations are known to cause excruciating pain.

To help manage her pain, Ava required a constant intravenous infusion of pain medication. She was also provided with eye lubrication four times a day with a very thick optical lubricant to prevent her eye from further drying and ulcerating.

But just as Ava was beginning to become more stable, she faced a devastating new obstacle.

A Deadly Setback

After just a few days in our care, the 6-week-old puppy came down with parvovirus, a potentially fatal virus seen in puppies. Parvovirus, or parvo, is completely preventable with adequate vaccination, but unfortunately, Ava was unvaccinated.

Puppies are incredible vulnerable to illness as their immune systems are still developing, so any exposure to something like parvo can become a very serious condition very quickly.

“Parvovirus is known to kill puppies when left untreated,” said Dr. Crowley. “It requires intensive supportive care because it causes a sloughing (or shedding) of the gastrointestinal tract, which makes them prone to secondary infections like sepsis as a result of losing their intestinal lining, allowing harmful bacterial to enter their bloodstream from their intestines. These puppies also have very low white blood cell counts, making them vulnerable to any other infection. They are at risk of aspiration pneumonia because the virus causes dramatic vomiting and regurgitation, which they can sometime breathe into their lungs and is another deadly consequence.”

The typical incubation period for parvovirus is one to two weeks, which indicated that Ava had been exposed prior to being admitted into our care.

Treating parvo requires intensive care for a normal puppy, but for Ava, her extensive injuries created even more challenges for treatment.

“From the beginning Ava wasn’t the best eater because her mouth was so painful, but then she had this additional hurdle to overcome that was causing her tremendous nausea and gastrointestinal pain,” explained Dr. Crowley.  “Nutritional support was very difficult for her but also very important as a young, growing puppy. We had her on intensive fluid therapy, multiple antibiotics, multiple pain medications and medications that help encourage the gut to move so that fluid doesn’t stay stagnant so she’s not at risk for that vomiting and aspiration pneumonia.”

Traditionally, an additional treatment for more severe parvo cases would include placing a feeding tube from the puppy’s nose into their stomach, allowing for the removal of excessive fluid that puppies will vomit up, as well as introduce nutrition if the puppy isn’t eating. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the displaced fractures in Ava’s face altering her nasal cavity, passing a tube through her nose was impossible.

“We are very fortunate at the ASPCA to have the generous support of our donors, so we were able to try a relatively new treatment in veterinary medicine called monoclonal antibody therapy,” Dr. Crowley told us. “That’s an injection that’s given that has antibodies specifically for the parvovirus multiped many times over. Parvo wipes out their immune system; they have no ability to fight the infection — this gives them a fighting chance. For Ava, it saved her life.”

When first arriving in our care, Ava was very depressed, in a lot of pain and often just sitting hunched over.

“Normally you would expect a 6-week-old puppy to be bouncing off the walls, chewing on things, barking, running around. Ava did none of those things,” she said. “But once she was over the hurdle of parvovirus, she completely changed. She became a bubbly puppy who was playful, social and rowdy. She became she lively puppy she was always meant to be.”

The Final Step to Recovery

Now that Ava was healthier and more stable, she was brought to ASPCA veterinary partner, Animal Medical Center (AMC) to have an extensive dental procedure done. They removed several of her teeth so that her jaw misalignment would no longer cause trauma to that area of her mouth.

“Dogs fortunately have plenty of teeth to spare, so she didn’t notice any were missing, but it did help her comfort level dramatically long term,” explained Dr. Crowley.

When she was feeling even more like herself, Ava was sent to see a veterinary ophthalmology team to see what the best course of action would be for her right eye.

“We would never want to remove a dog’s eye if we didn’t have to, so we sent her to see a specialist,” recalled Dr. Crowley. “The ophthalmologist assessed her and determined that the nerve damage to her face was permanent and unfortunately, she would never get that ability to blink back, so she would always be at risk for these painful ulcers on the surface of her eye. They made the recommendation to remove the eye. It was the right choice for her because she ended up having a very deep, non-healing ulcer in that eye that was painful. Afterwards she acted like nothing happened.”

Just days later, the now-one-eyed dog was bouncing around like a puppy her age should.

Once she was fully healed up from her surgery, Ava was ready for adoption. Over seven months had passed since she came into our care, and all it took was one meeting with her adopter to make each one of those days worth it. At the end of November, Ava was officially adopted into a loving home.

A Team Effort

Without the massive amounts of specialized care provided not only by the ASPCA, but also by our veterinary partners, Dr. Crowley is certain Ava would not have survived.

“Ava’s care was nothing short of a herculean effort of all teams involved at the ASPCA,” she said. “She was so incredibly sick with parvovirus at the beginning. It involved a lot monitoring on the clinicians’ part. We had to do a lot of exams to see how she was doing and to reassess her. The nursing team are heroes for these dogs. They’re the ones who are there overnight and called the doctors when Ava’s blood pressure got critically low and she needed medication. They’re the ones monitoring her, giving her the treatment, letting the doctors know of all the changes happening, encouraging her to try to eat, giving her the pain meds to keep her comfortable. It was definitely a very large team effort to get her recovered to where she is today.”

But our teams would not be able to provide Ava, or any animal, with the specialized care necessary for their survival if it were not for our dedicated and generous donors.

“Donor support for a case like Ava’s is lifesaving. None of the injuries she faced are easy to treat. Any one single injury would be something that would require intensive work in a veterinary setting. Ava unfortunately had setback after setback and injury after injury,” Dr. Crowley explained. “We were able to provide her with this intensive care and overnight monitoring with all the medications she needed, especially for the parvo recovery. Monoclonal antibodies are a wonderful treatment, but they are not cheap. Thanks to donor support, we were able to acquire that for Ava and it’s ultimately what saved her life.”

Why We Do It

When Dr. Crowley initially took the job of working exclusively on animal cruelty cases, she was shocked to see just how common animal cruelty is and learned quickly how taxing it is to see on a daily basis.

“It’s happening right under our noses,” she said. “I love my job, and I love what I do, but it is hard and it is draining to bear witness to some of the worst behavior that humanity can do to animals. For cruelty to happen to any dog is tragic and awful, but Ava was so young. Everyone thinks of puppies as innocent, loving creatures, and that’s what she was. For her to be so injured, regardless of how it happened, and rather than getting treatment or even dropping her off at a shelter where she could get help, just tossing her out like trash, and not valuing her life as this wonderful companion is really hard for me to deal with.”

But Dr. Crowley has found the best way to deal with it is to be a part of the recovery story.

“I really cherish watching these animals start to recover,” she told us. “Every milestone they hit makes a difficult job worth doing. Eventually seeing them leave our doors, go into homes, be loved like they should have been and always deserved, that’s the biggest reward for doing this job, even when it’s really difficult, even on those really hard days. I think people here are committed to this cause because they know we can make a difference.

Dogs deserve to be loved as much as they love us. Dogs deserve to have a home with people that cherish them as the unconditional sources of love that they are. Dogs have been by our sides for thousands of years, they are fiercely loyal to humans and they deserve to have that same loyalty returned. Dogs deserve happiness, safety, security and to be cherished and loved and met with patience and understanding.”

Ava has since found exactly that. She is now living in a kind, loving and safe home, being cherished in the way she was always meant to be.