Trio of Tripawds as told by Timmy

I turned 5 last Sunday.  As I sit and think of my past 5 years, I thought I would share the story of the Trio of Tripawds.  Those first couple of months, I don’t remember much.  I know I was born in Kentucky, taken away from my siblings, and left at a shelter. I was very young and very scared.  Before I was left at the shelter I had a terrible accident.  My rear right leg from my knee down was gone, and I had a peculiar scab.   A nice lady from Missouri, picked me up and took me home.  She told me I was safe, that she would care for me until I was old enough to get on a transport to Chicago.  I was only 3 weeks old, I was very scared, I didn’t know what safe meant let alone transport or even Chicago!  Just as I was getting comfortable, the nice lady told me it was time to go to Chicago.  I was put in a crate, in a van full of dogs and off we went.  After what seemed like forever, the van stopped and a new lady took me out of the crate, squeezed me really tight and told me she was from my rescue and I would be ok.  After a couple of weeks of being in Chicago and settling in, the rescue lady told me I was going to go to the vet to have the rest of my leg amputated.  I was terrified!  After I had surgery to remove the rest of my leg, and recovered for a couple of weeks; the rescue lady told me I was going to live with a foster until I found a forever home.  I still so young I didn’t understand what any of those words meant.  I was so scared at my foster home, my foster dad slept on the floor next to my crate, forever just so I wouldn’t be alone.  My fur four legged foster sister was much older than I was, she didn’t want to play with me much.  My foster mom and dad taught me how to play, took me to training, and would take me and my foster sister out.  It wasn’t much longer, my foster mom and dad told me I was a foster failure and they weren’t looking for a forever home for me anymore.  I was staying!!!  I was staying!!  I was so happy!!

My sister tolerated my puppy antics.  When she thought no one was watching she would snuggle with me and keep me safe.  But she was older than me, and she got sick.  I took care of her as long as I could, but one day my mom and dad were crying and they told me to kiss her goodbye they were taking her to the vet.  My dad carried her out of the house.  When my mom and dad came home they were crying more and my sister wasn’t with them.  I spent weeks looking for her and I got very sad not being able to find her.

Almost a year later, my mom sat with me on the couch and told me she I was getting a cat sister.   She told me she was just like me, missing her right rear leg.  She was a stray cat that had gotten stuck in a fence during the Chicago polar vortex of 2014.  A good samaritan had found her and took her to the humane society.  She was all healed, but she needed a family to love her.  I thought to myself, a cat, I had never been around a cat before.  I wasn’t real sure about this decision my mom and dad made!  They kept telling me I had to be nice to Tria, because she was part of our family and WE all love her!  After a couple of weeks I decided having a cat sister was pretty cool.  She could knock my bag of treats off the table so I could eat them.  We would snuggle all the time!  We even drank out of the same water bowl.

One day when my mom was looking at Facebook, she saw a really sick puppy that she said needed our help.  Annabelle was picked up as a stray on the southside of Chicago and was brought to an open access shelter. There was an injury to her hind leg that was bandaged and she was put on antibiotics while being held for the mandated five-day stray hold at the shelter.  When her stray hold was up, the vets at the shelter checked her leg and found that the wound had become so infected and necrotic that the only option was to amputate the leg and hopefully eliminate the source of infection.  Three days after Aviva’s leg was amputated, a rescue was contacted about this poor girl and they committed to taking her into their program. When they picked Annabelle up from the pound, they noticed there was blood oozing from one end of her stapled skin. When they looked more closely, they could see that several staples had come out and muscle tissue was visible. Concerned for her well-being, they rushed Aviva over to their vet where she was examined. Annabelle’s doctor discovered that she had a very high temperature, Annabelle’s white blood cell count was off the charts and their vet was very concerned that her medical condition could quickly become critical from blood poisoning. That very next morning, Annabelle went back in for surgery to have the entire surgical area, where her leg was removed, re-opened and cleaned out. Sadly, the infection in her leg was even worse than originally thought. A large abscess had already formed and ran deep into the joint. The vet was able to remove a lot of the puss and necrotic tissue, but had to create a special suction drain to help pull out more puss and fluid from the infected area. At that point, her situation was very touch and go and Annabelle was given a 50/50 chance of survival… it would take over a week of hardcore IV antibiotics to finally stabilize Annabelle and give her immune system a chance to catch up.  After weeks of hospitalization, Annabelle was able to stand tall on her own and was ready for her new three-legged life.

My mom and dad put me in the car, told me we were going to Lincoln Park to meet Annabelle!  We were both so excited when we met each other we didn’t want to part.  Mom, dad, Annabelle and I all left together.

We are now the Trio of Tripawds!!!

I say thank you to that nice lady from Missouri who took me out of the kill shelter, and put me on the transport to Chicago.  Without her none of this would have happened!