Little Tina Is Fighting For Her Life

Tina was born on the streets of Türkiye around two years ago. She had recently given birth when she & her two newborn puppies were collected by the dog catchers & taken to the shelter. Tina was luckier than most, she survived her time there but her babies didn’t. A hotbed of disease the little ones soon succumbed to the dreaded distemper & both passed away very quickly. Tina was distraught.

But her fortune took a turn for the better when a community carer noticed her & adopted her out of the shelter & took her to a safe place. For dogs like Tina, safety as we see it does not readily translate. She has no concept of walls or ceilings. No idea that she can no longer venture further than the garden gate. No idea that the streets she once roamed freely in relative safety were changed. The government could not tell 4 million strays that they could no longer live the only life known to them.

The overwhelming instinct to get back outside, back to the life that felt normal to Tina took over & eventually she found a way. While doing so in a place unknown to her. A place where she no longer knew every road, every street corner, every shop & every human, she was hit by a car.

Kind humans helped her but they were out of their depth. Tina had neurological problems, suspected brain damage. Tina needed specialists. Care that is not easily found & care that is well beyond the reach of community carers financially.

Luckily for Tina her community carer is a lady we have come to know well. She got in touch with us & asked for our help.

Of course we said yes.

Our driver went to fetch Tina straight away and then drove through the night across Türkiye to get this little dog to the animal hospital where she needed to be.

Initially, there was some good news. Tina’s blood work wasn’t the best, but remarkably she had no broken bones. Her internal organs were unharmed and, despite the symptoms she was displaying, there was no evidence that her brain had been damaged in the collision.

But because Tina had only recently come out of a shelter, there was something else we needed to know. Every dog who comes into our care undergoes diagnostic testing for infectious disease. It is particularly important with dogs who have recently spent time in environments where large numbers of animals are housed together.

Tina’s results gave us the answer we had been looking for. She had distemper. With that diagnosis everything fell in to place. The neurological symptoms that had made everyone fear she had suffered serious damage when she was hit by the car began to make sense.

Treatment for her distemper started immediately. She also had a wound that needed attention.

For a while, things were going well. Tina began eating and she even started to feel well enough to get up and wander around her quarantine area. Those little moments gave us a great deal of hope, canine distemper is a horrible disease and recovery can be painfully uncertain. In fact over the years I have come to loathe it. It takes so many lives & effects those who survive it with varying degrees of neurological damage for the rest of their lives.

The joy we felt when Tina first began to rally has been crushed this week, her neurological symptoms have worsened. She is more unstable on her feet than she was despite being desperate to move around her little courtyard area in the fresh air & sunshine. She is still eating but only with gentle encouragement from her nurse.

Sadly, this isn’t unusual with distemper. Dogs can appear to improve only for neurological symptoms to persist, change or worsen. Treating the immediate illness is one battle. Recovering from the damage it can cause to the nervous system is another, and reversing nerve damage is incredibly difficult.

So we are taking it one day at a time. We don’t know what her future will look like and we won’t pretend that we do. There are no guarantees with distemper.

What we do know is that Tina still has some fight left in her little body. She was born on the street. She survived life there, survived a shelter, escaped back to the world she understood, survived being hit by a car and is now facing perhaps the biggest battle of all.

As long as Tina still wants to fight, we will fight with her. We will be right beside her every step of the way. Giving her all the medication needed to fight this foul disease. Holding her paw, kissing her little forehead, telling her she is the best girl in the world & willing her immune system to fight with everything it has left.

If you would like to help Tina please keep her in your thoughts. Light a candle, say a prayer & if you can help with her treatment we would be very grateful.