Vet saves Harley after he's rescued from questionable breeder
August 17, 2009
PATRICK THATCHER, Staff Writer - High Desert Daily Press - www.vvdailypress.com
HESPERIA • There are not many things more heart-wrenching than knowing the puppy you’ve fallen in love with and made part of your family is so sick it needs to be euthanized.
“I can’t tell you how much I cried when I found out we had to put Harley to sleep,” said Tammy Walker of Apple Valley.
Walker thought she lost her Saint Bernard, Harley, to parvovirus just four days after she got him — until Dr. Shafeeq Ahmed of the Hesperia Animal Hospital stepped in and secretly saved the pup.
Walker found Harley through a breeder who advertised in the Penny Saver. When she and her boyfriend, Rich Mohatt, went to the breeder’s home to see the pups, she found the living conditions deplorable.
“The conditions the puppies were living in was inexcusable,” Walker said. “We paid for the pup and took him home just to get him out of there.”
Four days later, the couple took Harley to the Hesperia Animal Hospital for his shots.
“Dr. Ahmed examined him and found out he had advanced parvovirus, and I said, ‘OK, well, fix it,’ ” Walker said.
Ahmed explained it isn’t that simple.
He told her parvo is a virus that mostly attacks young pups exposed to a cramped and filthy living environment with other dogs. The virus infects the intestinal tract and is almost always deadly if not caught in its earliest stages.
Ahmed told Walker that if he treated Harley for the parvo, it would be expensive — upwards of $2,200. And even then there was not much chance the pup would survive.
“It was devastating for both Rich and myself,” Walker said. “I had fallen in love with this beautiful little puppy and I had to sign the papers to have him euthanized.”
Ahmed said the worst part of his profession is when he has to put down an animal.
“I went to school almost 10 1⁄2 years to become a veterinarian to help animals, not put them to sleep,” Ahmed said. “My heart really, really aches when I have to do a euthanasia.”
He said sometimes it just becomes too hard and that’s when he and his staff will do just about anything to save an animal or a young pup such as Harley. And so, without telling Walker, Ahmen began treating Harley.
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