[Trini]

Thanks-you everyone for your kind words and your welcome to our Tessa girl. She didn't seem to know her previous name, so we selected the name Tessa...it just seemed to fit her.

Yesterday she had her introduction visit to our vet. She is grossly over weight and needs to lose about 1/4 of her current body weight. She has luxating patellas in both back legs...surgery is not being recommended due to intensity of the needed surgery because it would be far more involved than a simple luxating surgery which only carves out a groove in the bone. Her condition has been untreated for so long that the knees are totally out of the joint and muscles and ligaments that have grown to hold them in this abnormal position would have to be cut to allow the knees to be moved back into normal position...our vet feels this would be way too hard a surgery for a little older girl to withstand and I totally agree. So, she has been started on Dasuquin to help her joints and make her more comfortable. Blood work also flags possible liver and kidney issues...these may be related to her testing hypothyroid and hopefully with Soloxine for the thyroid, Denamarin to support her liver and with substantial weight loss, we will see improvement in all areas when her follow-up blood work is done in 2 months.

Thankfully we have a truly wonderful vet and we also have another vet hospital within an hour's drive that is staffed entirely by specialists on every subject related to animal medical issues. So everything possible will be done to give our sweet girl as good a life as possible. Tessa really is a precious little soul. I honestly think these needy rescues bring to us far more than we can ever give back in return and we are blessed to have her join our family.

Trini