Rescue Me

Meet Duchess: Cuddle Bug

Duchess, a 4-year-old dachshund, is waiting for a home at Atlanta Pet Rescue and Adoption.

Every week, Midtown Patch visits an area shelter and highlights the story of an adoptable animal that might otherwise get overlooked. Duchess was found wandering around in mid-March and brought into the Gwinnett County Animal Control as a stray. Usually, in such cases, the hope is that the owner will come forward to claim the lost animal. Nobody showed up for Duchess. If someone had come in, Gwinnett County probably would have charged the person with animal cruelty. Instead, she got sent to Atlanta Pet Rescue and Adoption in Midtown. When the 4-year-old dachshund arrived, she was still so emaciated that every vertabra in her back and tail stuck out like a little marble underneath her skin. Because she didn't have enough muscle or fat to …

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Rescue Me

Meet Precious: Tiny Dancer

Precious, a nine-year-old cockapoo, is waiting for a new home at Atlanta Pet Rescue & Adoption in Midtown.

Every week, Midtown Patch visits an area shelter and highlights the story of an adoptable animal that might otherwise get overlooked. Precious has a little trick she pulls out when she wants attention or a treat. She dances around on her hind legs and doggie-paddles the air with her front legs. "She does it for dinnertime. She does it for everything," said Judy Price, director of Atlanta Pet Rescue & Adoption. "She's a very vivacious, bouncy little girl." But Precious was in excruciating pain and couldn't even walk when she arrived at the shelter a few days before Valentine's Day from the Cobb County Animal Control, where her owners had surrendered her. Clearly, she'd suffered years of neglect at their hands. Her toenails had overgrown so …

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Katjusa Cisar

7:48 pm on Thursday, March 31, 2011

UPDATE: Precious is still up for adoption (as of Thursday, March 31). Check out this video that APRA made of her: http://youtu.be/kC_TH59yw68?a In a word: precious.   more ›

Shelter Quarantines Dogs after Parvo Outbreak

Atlanta Pet Rescue and Adoption plans to squash an outbreak by keeping dogs quarantined and under close veterinary watch.

Atlanta Pet Rescue and Adoption is voluntarily quarantining its dogs until March 8 after a few of the shelter's dogs contracted canine parvovirus. The infected dogs were treated with an antibiotic cocktail and are now healed, but the shelter is taking the precaution to stop adopting out dogs or accepting new dogs during this time. "It's not something we could have forecasted," said Shannon Goldsmith, vet technician. "We're doing some very, very, very, very detailed disinfection." "Parvo," as it's commonly called, is a highly contagious virus that attacks cardiac arteries or the intestine, depending on the strain, and causes lethargy, bloody diarrhea and chronic vomiting. It spreads through direct or indirect contact with contaminated feces…

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Rescue Me

Meet Stella: Shy Girl Saved from Cat Hoarder

Stella, a sweet Siamese mix with pale blue eyes and a bushy tail, is waiting at Atlanta Pet Rescue and Adoption for a home.

Every week, Midtown Patch visits an area shelter and highlights the story of an adoptable animal that might otherwise get overlooked. Stella is only 11 months old, a teenager in cat years, but her life already sounds like it belongs to the guest of a daytime television talk show. She grew up in a small apartment where a woman was reportedly keeping 20 cats, most (if not all of them) unspayed and unneutered. The woman was evicted at the end of December for not paying rent, and Stella and four other cats from the apartment ended up at Atlanta Pet Rescue and Adoption. Ulcers covered their mouths, requiring antibiotic treatment. When the shelter had Stella spayed, they discovered too late that she was already in the early stages of a pregnancy…

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Rescue Me

Meet Bishop: Trouper, Toupee Maker

Bishop, a Shih Tzu, is waiting at Atlanta Pet Rescue and Adoption for a home.

Every week, Midtown Patch visits an area shelter and highlights the story of an animal that might otherwise get overlooked. Don't tell Bishop, but sometimes the staff at Atlanta Pet Rescue put a thatch of his hair on their heads and wear it like a toupee. It's all in good fun now, but the history of that toupee isn't. The six-by-six-inch square is only a portion of the knotted hair they had to cut from the little dog. Bishop arrived at Atlanta Pet Rescue in late January with fur so matted that a clump protruded "like an awning over his eyes," said director Judy Price. Shih Tzu dogs are bred for their long and silky hair, but street life had gnarled one-year-old Bishop. He was found in Jonesboro "running loose looking for love in all the …

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Shelter pets have their snow days, too

Cats and dogs waiting for adoption at Midtown shelters are getting help from dedicated employees and volunteers to ride out Snowpocalypse 2011

The e-mail to Atlanta Pet Rescue volunteers went out early Sunday morning, after volunteer coordinator Cathy Roth heard a snowstorm was headed for the city. Responses started coming back in 10 minutes. "Within six hours, every animal in the shelter was gone. It was phenomenal," Roth said. The Midtown shelter's 21 dogs and seven cats are now safely dispersed into volunteer's homes. With a thick blanket of iced snow slicking city roads — and predicted to stay that way as late as Saturday — local shelters have had to get resourceful, or risk stranding animals. Patrick Palmer, a manager at the Atlanta Humane Society, put his two sons in the care of a relative, packed a bag and arrived at the shelter by 4 p.m. Sunday, right before snow started …

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