Adopting a Rescue | What to Expect

Hey, guys, My name is Dr. Lehre. I'm here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital today. Today I'm here with Aslan. Aslan is a mixed breed dog who came from China. And Aslan was rescued so that he would not end up at the Yunlun Dog Meat Festival. And so mom is already ready to take care of him, that kind of stuff. And so she's getting ready to adopt him. And I'm gonna put him on the ground just because it looks like he's starting to want to go towards Mom. So here, go. All right, here we go. There you go. And so mom wanted to know. She wanted to know if he was healthy because mom is getting ready to pay the adoption fee and all that kind of stuff. And as anyone who would be adopting anybody, whether it's a child, a human child, or a dog child or a cat child, you would want to know what to expect in terms of health. And so mom brought him in today to go ahead and have us help her evaluate his health status. So when we were looking at Aslan today, what I told mom was we would go over some different major things that were our most commonly issues. So first thing we looked at was his teeth. Now, one of the reasons that we looked at his teeth was to help mom get a better idea of his age. Now, Aslan has a mix of baby teeth and adult teeth. And typically dogs will start losing their baby teeth between 4 and 5 months of age while the adult teeth start coming in. Next thing, mom was concerned that he had some discharge from his eyes. And so we looked at his eyes and didn't see any sort of major issues there. That's usually not going to be a concern for me. The one thing that I have seen, maybe in puppies, more commonly English bulldog puppies, is maybe a cherry eye. Aslan didn't have that. The next thing that we looked at was his ears. Most commonly with dogs who are being rescued, or whether it's from a puppy mill or a rescue organization or something like that, you'll want to check them for ear mites. Ear mites is something that's actually relatively easy to treat. Ginger, you guys have seen her on my video, on previous videos. If you haven't, you can go and see her. She's adorable. So is Ruby. I don't want Ruby getting jealous. Of course, Ginger had ear mites, and it was something that was very easily treated. We put drops in her ear once. Then a week later we put drops in again just to be sure, and the ear mites were gone. The Next thing, of course, that we'll listen to will be the heart. We want to make sure that there isn't any evidence of any sort of major heart murmur or anything like that. Because if there is, that's something that we need to be aware of, going into it, knowing, hey, we may have a shortened lifespan if we have a severe murmur. Recognizing that heart murmurs are something that people, dogs, cats and all animals sometimes can be born with and live an entirely normal life for a regular lifespan and be perfectly fine. The other thing that we checked on Aslan, because he is a male, we wanted to make sure that both of his testicles had come down into the scrotum. That's something that we want to make sure that it both testicles have come down because if they haven't, then there's a possibility that he may need an additional surgery or an abdominal surgery to get those testicles out. The last thing we checked for was a umbilical hernia, which that is something that usually is fixed relatively easily, but Asan did not have that either. So these are just some different things to go ahead and look for when you're getting ready to adopt a dog. The last thing I told mom, if we want to be more thorough and is doing blood work to take a look at the liver, the kidneys and those kinds of things. If you guys found this video, please give us a thumbs up. Otherwise, subscribe. Subscribe and share with somebody if you think they need this. Have a great day and thanks for watching. Bye bye.