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Updated
7:13 AM on Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Wilma Lord has dealt with countless abused and neglected dogs during the 15 years she has worked for animal shelters. The dog she saw Saturday, however, was unlike anything she had ever encountered, she said. Lord found an abused young pit bull lying in a ditch along F.M. 166 in Burleson County. The dog, which she later named "Survivor," was alive, but barely. It died a day later. Now Lord's shelter, Mr. K's Pet Shelter, is offering a $200 reward for anyone who might know who is to blame for the abuse. "It was horrifying to me even though I do animal rescue and have grown immune to this sort of thing," Lord said. "He had a tooth hanging out of his mouth. All of his bottom teeth were gone. He had big lacerations. To me, it looked like barbed wire had been wrapped around his legs. I found him right in front of the trash dump." Lord took the dog to PetSmart in College Station, where veterinarian Pamela Cockrum attended to it - only to find more problems. The dog's temperature was below 95 degrees, while a healthy dog's temperature is usually around 99 to 102.5. In addition, it had heartworm, lipworm, liver problems and its kidneys had failed. After one night of trying to save the dog, Cockrum recommended that the dog be euthanized. "Things were going down instead of up," Cockrum said. "I rarely recommend that animals be euthanized, but this dog just had so much wrong with it. It was a really tough thing to have to do but he was just not improving, and I felt that at that point he was suffering." The dog died Sunday afternoon, Cockrum said. Lord said she believed the dog was raised to fight by its owner and was abandoned after it either lost a fight or was used as bait for other dogs because it was not aggressive enough. Cockrum also said she suspected the dog was in a fight. "It kind of had that look about it because he did have these big long open wounds that looked like lacerations that could have been caused by teeth," she said, "and he also had some puncture wounds that were on his body that could have been tooth holes." Lord and volunteers from her shelter paid the veterinary expenses for the dog and are now seeking donations to help recover the costs, as well as money to help pay for the reward that has been offered. Lord said she called the Burleson County Sheriff's Office but no arrests have been made. She said people can contact the shelter online at www.mrkspetshelter.org with any information. "Whoever did this really needs some mental help," Lord said. "If they do it to a dog, they will do it to a kid. This shouldn't happen to any animal." • Matthew Watkins' e-mail address is matthew.watkins@ theeagle.com.
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