This holiday season, as we reflect on all that we are grateful for this year, let’s not forget our wonderful animal companions that are grateful too. These rescue animals came from situations in which they were neglected and/or abused, so finding a furever home where they are loved and appreciated is exactly what they needed and deserved. Check out some of these unfurgettable stories.

Snoopy’s Story

Rescued by Penny & Wild from a hoarding situation in Little Havana, Miami, alongside 36 other rabbits living in horrific conditions, Snoopy, a Dwarf Hotot/Havana rabbit mix, had an infection in his lips from being repeatedly attacked by another rabbit. Penny & Wild took Snoopy to the veterinarian’s office where he underwent surgery, having his lips cleaned out and then stitched back together. Snoopy was then neutered and adopted by the Grossman family, who already had another rabbit named Bluebell who needed a buddy.

“Our vet told us there was a rescue near us in Parkland. We went and took a look and that was it,” recalls Adam Grossman, who has formed a deep bond with this resilient rabbit. “Snoopy is so friendly and personable. He’ll even jump in your lap when you’re watching TV.”

About Penny & Wild: Penny & Wild is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, no-kill, 100% foster-based small-animal rescue specializing in rabbits and guinea pigs. Founded in 2021 by then-18-year-old Parkland resident Dylan Warfel after another rescue dropped its small-animals program, Penny & Wild’s primary goal is to save animals that won’t get a second chance: strays, animals on euthanasia lists, hoarding cases, and medical cases. For more information, visit www.pennyandwild.org.

Pingo’s Story

Pingo was found stuck in a car tire in Coral Springs after a heavy rainfall and brought to the United for Animals Rescue (UFAR) shelter. UFAR examined this kitten and found he was full of worms and fleas, had a hematoma in one leg, and was also sick with a cold. He received veterinary attention and was placed in foster care and nursed back to good health. During that time, Pingo bonded with his foster family, who already had another cat and a dog.

A few weeks later, Pingo was returned to the shelter to be neutered and put up for adoption. His foster family visited him every day. It broke their hearts to see Pingo stuck in a crate, unable to run and play as he had at their house. Even their dog was depressed, as it missed playing with Pingo. Finally, after a week of being without this sweet kitten, his foster family decided to officially make Pingo part of the family.

About United for Animals Rescue: UFAR is a no-kill pet shelter, rescue, and adoption facility located in Margate that provides shelter for abandoned and abused companion animals. For more information, visit www.unitedforanimalsrescue.org.

Lilly’s Story

Lilly was rescued by the South Florida Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) alongside 100 other farm animals from deplorable conditions in Redland. Unclaimed by her mother, the young goat was starving and still had her umbilical cord attached when rescuers arrived. Lilly was immediately bottle-fed by the organization’s vice president, before urinating on her rescuer and then falling asleep.

Christine Scepter, the South Florida SPCA’s executive director, took charge of Lilly’s care, bringing her to and from work every day to keep her on a regular bottle-feeding schedule. “She was never far from where I was,” recalls Scepter. “She thought I was her mommy.” As Lilly grew stronger, she spent time with the rest of the rescued goat herd and formed a bond with another goat named Drama.

Eventually, Scepter decided to adopt both Lilly and Drama. “Having a relationship with her has been filled with wonderful, funny, and endearing moments,” says Scepter. “She knows her name, and she gets jealous if I pay too much attention to Drama when she wants her time.”

About the South Florida SPCA: This SPCA is a charitable organization dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating horses and other livestock, and then safely rehoming them across the country. The organization does not adopt animals back into the food chain. For more information, visit www.spca-sofla.org.

Biggs’ Story

Biggs, a 5-year-old American Staffordshire terrier, was rescued by “Tails from the Barkside” after a plea from Broward County Animal Care. Biggs was emaciated and anemic, and he could barely walk. Tails from the Barkside immediately took him to the veterinarian’s office where he spent 10 days receiving love, care, and the medical attention he desperately needed. Slowly, Biggs began to trust humans again.

Months later, after proper training and socialization by Tails from the Barkside, Biggs was adopted by a loving family. Unfortunately, four years after being rescued, Biggs was diagnosed with lung cancer and passed last year.

About Tails from the Barkside: This pet rescue is a small, foster-based, and family-run 501(c)(3) organization based in Coral Springs. They work to save abused, neglected, and discarded dogs from the streets and local shelters in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. For more information, visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/TFTBS.

I have a love-hate relationship with social media. I love keeping up with the lives of my friends and family, Amazon and I are family now, and I do look at reviews of restaurants before I decide to try a new one. But the people of Colorado take it to the next level. I live in Colorado part of the year, and they literally will sell a container of protein powder with one scoop missing and someone buys it. I saw someone purchase a used toilet plunger the other day.

To acclimate myself to my new neighborhood, I joined the local community Facebook group. I see a lot of the same issues as I see in Florida: The community pool is too cold, the community pool is too hot, and nonstop talk about swim diapers. I need a few items that some people like to sell or give away, so I spend a little too much time on the Facebook group. One day, a person put out a question about her Dachshund rubbing her nose excessively on the lawn and whether anyone else had that problem.

I read responses describing pets with environmental allergies to grasses, weeds, and trees, to one woman who proclaimed that she was a 50-year Dachshund owner/expert and sent a link about the history of Dachshunds being burrowing animals. One person sent a link about the types of mites found in the lawns and how they could irritate a dog, especially one so low to the ground.

After about an hour, the owner of the Dachshund posted that her dog was starting to scratch her ears and lick her paws excessively. Within a minute she had comments and links to shampoos, lotions, and Benadryl doses for dogs. I was hoping that with the posts, she was going to call her veterinarian or bring the dog to the hospital if the Dachshund was that uncomfortable. In the following half-hour, there were more than 30 responses from neighbors, each one blaming something that could be easily treated with a home remedy. At the hour mark, the owner wrote that the dog was starting to look puffy, and she was very uncomfortable. Before I could even comment, there were a dozen comments about doubling the dose of Benadryl, ice packs, cold baths, and one person even talked about rubbing steroid cream on the muzzle.

I decided to private-message the owner. I explained to her that I am a veterinarian and asked her to send me a picture of her dog, Sadie. The Dachshund’s muzzle and head were huge — at least twice the size of normal. I asked her to take a picture of the inside of her lips, and I could see the spot where Sadie had been bitten by a bee or wasp, and I noticed that her tongue was slightly blue, a clear sign of cyanosis. I told her to go immediately to her veterinarian because Sadie was having an anaphylactic reaction.

At the veterinary hospital, they gave her intravenous steroids, along with IV fluids, and put her in an oxygen cage because her oxygen saturation was low. Sadie did great, and she was discharged later in the day. When I saw that the owner of Sadie posted later in the night, I was hoping that she would post that you should call your veterinarian first because sometimes the speed of treatment can be essential to treatment, but she didn’t. She thanked me personally and told the Facebook group that a new veterinarian had moved into the area and that he really helped her.

So much for staying anonymous.

I get it. Cats, if they have a preference, like to be outside. Especially if they have previously had an outdoor experience and enjoyed it. Many indoor cats that sleep all day along windowpanes or in front of glass doors are very content looking at the outside world, and if they are stimulated with indoor playtime, they are perfectly content living in the house. Now I have some clients who have rescued outdoor cats, and some of those cats will do just about anything to get outside. This story is about one of those cats, named Jessie.

To say that I have worked on Jessie is an understatement. I have seen Jessie for a myriad of injuries. To this date, I have surgically placed drains in Jessie three times for abscesses. I have seen Jessie twice for bite wounds that did not require surgical drains. I have had to remove a broken tooth and have had to surgically remove a foreign body out of her intestines, and we have no idea how she lost the tip of her ear. She is a hunter. Like most cats, she brutally hunted the birds in her territory. These cats also hunt rodents and iguanas, and they get into fights with other cats in the neighborhood.

My client felt that he watched Jessie most of the day. He had set up remote cameras in the backyard to watch Jessie, and when he got home from work, he fed her in the house and closed the door, so she stayed inside at night. When I asked him why he couldn’t keep her in the house during the day, he showed me a picture of all the furniture that she had destroyed when she couldn’t get outside during the day. Ironically, she didn’t destroy furniture at night and slept after dinner until he ritually allowed her out at 8 a.m. before he went to work. He must have gotten up on the weekends when he was not going to work to let her outside. I guess her routine trumped his weekend routine.

One day the owner sent me a video of a fight between Jessie and another cat. Jessie was asleep on the patio and another cat hopped the fence. Jessie went into attack mode. Typically, after seeing how fast and aggressive Jessie was, a cat would run away, but this cat didn’t, and the fight was quick and brutal. This episode resulted in Jessie’s last surgery. There was an abscess over her neck and bite wounds on her face and feet. Jessie spent the next two days in the hospital getting pain medication and antibiotics.

We watched the video over and over. The owner just could not understand how the fight had occurred. He had installed a six-foot privacy fence. His last fence was a four-foot chain-link fence with hedges. He also had cameras installed. He even had a funny sign put on the fence about his attack cat. He could not understand why another cat would jump the fence. I had to bite my lip not to sound condescending, and my technician had to leave the room. I explained to the owner that the privacy fence, signage, and cameras were there to designate his property lines to the world. The invading cat’s territory was probably the whole street, and he probably found the new fence annoying. The owner asked me what he could do, and I told him to keep Jessie inside, because the next fight could end up being her last one.

One year later, Jessie is a couch cat and sleeps most of the day happily on the furniture.

I was such a cheerleader from the sidelines. Usually in a conversation, I am the one who is defending animal rights or educating people about them, but recently I observed my kindred spirit. I live part of the year in Colorado, and going to the dog park when the temperatures are below freezing is not an activity I typically partake in, but recently we had a nice surprise. The temperatures were in the high 50s, so I went with my daughter and her dog to the local dog park. Now Coloradans don’t care what the temperature is. They will go to the dog park if it is 5 degrees below zero.

So on this day, the dog park was busy. I believe that everyone in Colorado has more than one dog. I could overhear a man and a woman talking passionately about something related to the man’s sick dog. It obviously had nothing to do with the malamute that he was throwing the ball to. That dog was running at full speed, not caring what was between him and the ball, as he was completely focused on getting that ball and preventing other dogs from touching it. What I could hear was that his puppy Monty was in the local animal hospital fighting for his life with parvovirus.

Parvovirus is a killer. If a puppy gets it, there is a 50/50 chance of its survival, even if it gets the best care at the best hospital. Parvovirus targets rapidly dividing cells in the body such as the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and the bone marrow, so the puppy will have explosive diarrhea and vomiting. The integrity of its GI tract will be compromised, allowing bacteria to enter the bloodstream, and because the bone marrow is also affected, the puppy won’t have the ability to fight off the infection. Most people will never know a puppy is affected by parvo, because veterinarians vaccinate all puppies four times starting when they are 2 months old, and they are typically revaccinated again at a year old, then every three years.

I did hear the woman in the conversation ask the man if he had had his puppy vaccinated, and he said he doesn’t “do vaccines anymore.” He didn’t get COVID vaccinated, he doesn’t get flu shots, and he won’t get the shingles vaccine no matter how much his doctor and girlfriend ask him to. The woman asked if the malamute, named Aspen, was vaccinated and he said that he was, but he is not going to do it anymore. The woman then told the man that parvovirus is incredibly contagious and typically transmitted through the stool to other dogs. She told him that Aspen is probably doing so well because he was vaccinated, and if his puppy was positive for parvovirus last week, most likely he was passing parvovirus in his stool. Therefore, if he defecated at the park, he could infect young dogs not fully vaccinated.

The man was getting uncomfortable as others were joining the conversation. People in Colorado are uber-protective of their pets. That dog park had regulars, and they were not happy that someone had potentially brought an infectious disease to their dog park. The man stopped throwing the ball and started to walk toward his car. I must have looked empathetic to him because he muttered to me to “watch out for the Fauci liberals over there.” I was about to educate him about infectious disease when my daughter grabbed my arm and gave me the look, “Not today.”

Ironically, Colorado was not a mask-happy-wearing state, but if COVID affected dogs, believe me, you would see dogs in designer masks. Please don’t bring unvaccinated puppies to dog parks.

“We all have the ability to connect with our animals on a deep spiritual level,” says Elaine
McCarty, animal Reiki master teacher and animal empath. Known as “the Animal Reiki Lady,” McCarty is dedicated to helping people establish deeper connections with their animal companions. We asked her to share that wisdom.

Q. How do you help people build a deeper connection with their animal?

A. The secret to forming a deep connection is balance and harmony and peace and calm. I show people how to release stress so that they can be fully present for their animal.

Q. What does being fully present mean?

A. Animals pick up on stress. Being fully present means clearing your mind and putting your stress aside. You can do that by meditating, focusing on your breathing, focusing on what you love about your animal companion.

Q. And once our mind is clear?

A. Spend time that’s not for you, but for them. I think that’s especially important right now. A lot of pets were adopted during the pandemic and are used to having their human companions at home. But now many people are going back to work. When left alone, this causes stress for the animal. They need to know you’re still there for them.

Q. How do we do that?

A. If you have a dog, take him for a decompression walk — a walk where you take your time, letting him go where he wants, sniff what he wants, not making him heel. The walk has to be for him, not for you.

Q. You practice animal Reiki. What is that?

A. Reiki therapy is a relaxation practice that rebalances our pet’s energy. It helps reduce stress, promote healing, and create an amazing space of love and compassion for people and animals. It’s a complementary practice to veterinary care that supports our pets’ spiritual well-being.

Q. What is Reiki used for?

A. Connection, behavioral changes, healing, end-of-life transitions. For animals that are exhibiting a certain behavior — say a dog that always barks when it’s raining — Reiki can help change their behavior without punishing them. Animals cannot voice their discomfort or confusion. They can’t say “I don’t understand why I feel this way.” When a vet tells you your horse has cancer, your horse doesn’t freak out. It doesn’t know it has cancer, it only knows how much pain it’s in. But the horse can feel your stress when you hear that your horse has cancer. Reiki helps keep them calm and in a space that allows their bodies to heal.

The healing benefits of Reiki are not limited to animals. Both the Mayo and Cleveland Clinic incorporate Reiki into their holistic treatment for pain management.

Elaine McCarty lives in Colorado but frequents Parkland at least four times per year, teaching animal Reiki at Three 7s Animal Sanctuary and seeing private clients. If you’re interested in learning more, check out her informative videos on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, under the handle “The Animal Reiki Lady.” For additional resources, or to get in touch with McCarty, visit her website at theanimalreikilady.com.