We have our girl back! I want to thank everyone for their support. Without you we couldn't have gotten through this.
We are spending some time with our girl and getting her adjusted to "life on the outside".
We will be making posts in the coming days talking about things we couldn't while she was being incarcerated unjustly.
For those new to our story I will give the very short version. If you read the rest of our web page you will get all the details, we are very thorough.
We found a dog in Florida in 2014 (we are from North Carolina). She seemed hurt so we took her to an emergency vet. Vet looked her over, and she had a tiny (like the size of my pinkie finger tip a 1/4 inch circle) under her armpit wound. It was not deep it was NOT a bite. The vet told us she seemed to be a hog hunting dog by the look of her collar and all the scars on her.
Vet told us we should get her to a normal vet for a check up and shots. Never once did she say we should worry about rabies.
We got her an appointment for Monday (mind you we were in FL on a job trial/"vacation") and we were far from home. We got her checked out, the second vet said she was fine, got her shots and now we were all set. We have all this paperwork.
We tried really hard to find someone to take her because it seemed I was horribly allergic to her and we all ready had two dogs and live in a very small condo. We could not find anyone in any rescues to help. Animal control in this area is very high kill, they have been known to kill in less than 5 days. I would NOT give her to them.
We ended up bring her home to NC with us after exhausting all attempts to find where she could go.
Because of my allergies I was self medicating with several over the counter medications, I did not have health insurance when this happened. This wasn't smart but my throat was closing up, I could not breath and if you talk to anyone with serious allergies you know the panic you feel when you can not breath.
After arriving home in NC and contacting more rescues (all of which said they could not help) a couple told me to contact NC Orange County Animal Services and ask them if they could set me up with one of the rescues they work with. They actually had a really good reputation. I contacted them and that's when things went bad.
Upon learning she had a "wound of unknown origins" which was what the first vet wrote on her records they started pushing me to hand her over because they felt she was suspect of being exposed to rabies. They even sent a animal control officer to my home which ended with me feeling threatened when I was told I didn't want them coming back for her.
She was held by NC Orange County Animal Services for a month and then forced into private quarantine for a total time of six months (includes the time NCOCAS had her and the time we had her with us from the day we brought her to the vet).
We fought to get her back. Everything we did fell on deaf ears. We even had the CDC on our side.
I know this doesn't paint me in the best light but I was trying to comply with the law. I'm a law abiding citizen, I don't even jay walk. I didn't think my local government would do something like this.
We've just gotten her back yesterday April 11th. We are so very happy now and we no longer live in fear that they will put her down. So now we can talk about all the things we were afraid to say. Which we will in a new post. I just wanted to give a super short version to anyone new to our situation.
This is a VERY short version of what has happened. There are tons of details I left out. You can read everything in depth, and there is a LOT of information here on this page. We documented everything we could and there will be a lot more. We plan on fighting to change things, get people in power educated properly about rabies and make sure there is transparency in government so you know exactly what is going on. Through all this we felt like we were running top speed in a pitch dark room smashing into walls. I don't want anyone else to ever go through our nightmare.
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