X-posted from lounge: Washington DC Animal Rescue Leauge needs your help

[charlie and algernon]

This is the same rescue league where I got my cat, Esther. This is a great shelter and they frequently take in dogs from puppy mills. They give the dogs all the medical aid they need and then adopt the dogs, that can be adopted, out. I just got this email from them. They recently recieved a large amount of dogs from a puppy mill in Arkansas and are in desperate need for money to provide crucial medical aide and give these poor dogs food. Please, please, please do what you can to help out this Rescue League. They truly are the real deal and some great people.

Most recently the call was about dogs and cats seized from an absolutely horrendous puppy mill in Arkansas. They had spent their entire lives, day after long day, in dirty, crowded wire cages stacked floor to ceiling in rundown trailers. They were filthy, emaciated, sick, and infested with parasites. And now the survivors, just liberated from their hellish confinement, needed someone to take them in, fix them up, and find them homes.

snip

After just a few good meals and a bath, the dogs were feeling better than they ever had! But the truly serious problems had not yet been addressed.

I hesitate to tell you just how badly off some of these dogs were. You may not even believe me.

One Yorkshire terrier was terribly covered in fleas and would have died without an immediate blood transfusion. The fleas had taken so much of his blood that they nearly killed him.

A Shih Tzu had an eye infection of the sort that we veterinarians do not generally consider a serious emergency. But in her case, the infection had been ignored for so long that the eye had atrophied. It had to be removed for the health of the dog, whose vision will be impaired for the rest of her life.

Another little dog, who had the misfortune of living in a cage on the bottom of the stack at the puppy mill, was entirely covered with feces and urine from the dogs living above her. And when we shaved off the matted wads that should have been her fur, we found a large tumor on her stomach. She'll need surgery, but she is still too emaciated and weak to risk it.

I said we will save these dogs' lives, and we will. But you can imagine what it is costing us. The dogs are eating as much food as we can give them (and we have to give them really good food); the Medical Center is going through costly supplies and medicines at a rate I have never seen before; and the staff is working around the clock to see that these dogs are comfortable and getting everything they need to recover and begin new lives.

Here is the link to donate to the League:
https://warl.securedonation.org/warl/?q=node/1&jid=EC0015