Puppy Morris’ second chance
Abandoned in a cardboard box with an eye injured beyond repair, tiny puppy Morris was just four weeks old. He must have been terrified and in so much pain. The Cavalier King Charles spaniel puppy arrived at Together for Animals member charity Blue Cross, after being found all alone outside a supermarket in Carterton, Oxfordshire.
Noosh, Admissions Coordinator at the Burford rehoming centre, told us: “When I collected him from the first vet, his eye was in a horrific condition. And he was quite skinny, just so tiny and also quite dirty. There was a lot of blood around the box as well due to his injury.”
Morris needed urgent vet treatment for his eye, which had sustained some sort of severe trauma. He spent a couple of days under close observation to make sure that he was strong enough for surgery to remove his ruptured eye, which could not be saved. It was a major operation for such a small and weak puppy, but the surgery was a success – and Morris was ready to be discharged to continue his recovery at Blue Cross a couple of days later.
In need of round-the-clock care and monitoring, including regular pain relief and antibiotics to prevent infection, he went straight into foster care with one of the team.
Noosh continues: “He was in foster with another older dog and relied quite a lot on her at first as he adjusted to having one eye. But once he’d spent those first few days following her around, he was off and thriving. “He coped really well without the eye and would just bounce around like a normal puppy, so I don’t think he knew any different.”
Morris was in foster care for a month, during which time he had numerous checks back at the vet to make sure his surgery was healing well. To everyone’s relief, he didn’t seem to be too mentally scarred by his awful ordeal.
Once he got the all clear, there was no stopping him – and the now confident, energetic puppy was soon off to start his next chapter as a much-loved pet. It was hugely rewarding for Noosh and the team to see. “By the time he left, he was a whole different puppy from the one I picked up. He had been so small, just sitting there in the box waiting to be picked up. When he came back to the centre to be taken to his new home, he was tearing around, sprinting up to everyone. You couldn’t keep him still.”