Darby the “Ambassadog”

Darby, a 6-year-old Rottweiler, was found as a stray with a purposeful chemical burn on her back. The Good Samaritan who found her contacted Blue Buffalo Home 4 the Holidays organization, Planned Pethood, who took her in and committed to finding her the care she needed.

Darby’s wounds, which consisted of first, second and third degree burns, spread across her back and measured about 9 x 12 inches. A Planned Pethood foster family agreed to care for Darby while she healed – plus this foster home already had a resident Rottweiler, bonus for Darby!

Darby’s two topical medications required to be applied twice per day. Obviously, it was not enjoyable for Darby and it was not very fun for her foster mom, too. 

Her foster mom quickly realized that having an extra set of hands made the process easier for her and Darby. But since she lived alone, that required other volunteers to come to her house twice a day. Our amazing volunteers were more than happy to help.

When first seeing Darby’s wounds everyone seemed to have the same reaction. They would just stare at the area, speechless for several minutes, then attempt to form the questions of why, how... WHO would do this? Despite the overwhelming, intense wound Darby carried around on her back, she welcomed every new visitor with a slight tail wiggle and a head nudge. The visitors’ job was to feed Darby as many spoonfuls of peanut butter as she wanted while her foster mom applied the medications.
After some time, Darby’s foster mom needed to return to her job, but Darby still needed to be supervised to make sure she didn’t scratch the itchy, healing skin. Our Executive Director came up with the idea of Darby staying at her house during the day. It was a perfect solution. Our ED worked from home and her husband worked second shift.

Darby was dropped off every morning on her foster mom’s way to work and picked up every afternoon. During one of the days, our ED invented a contraption for Darby to wear out of kids’ swimming noodles and an old t-shirt to prevent her back legs from reaching the wound in order to scratch. It worked! A few details needed tweaked and a talented supporter of ours drove from 45 minutes away armed with her sewing machine and supplies, and used the original design to make another design, right in Darby’s foster home. They were lovingly called "Darby’s tubes." This allowed Darby more freedom, better movement and she could stay in her foster home during the weekdays without risk of tearing the wound back open.

All in all, her recovery lasted four-and-a-half months. When it was time to offer her for adoption, Darby and her foster mom decided they could not part with each other. On October 10, 2010, Darby was adopted by her foster mom at the Rossford PetSmart location. 

After her adoption, Darby became an "ambassadog" for Planned Pethood, attending area adoption events and educational talks, where her presence brought to life the plight of rescued animals and the need to combat animal cruelty.

Sadly, Darby passed away due to complications with cancer in June, 2011. We honor her and her inspiring story for being one of our favorite adopted pets of the Blue Buffalo Home 4 the Holidays adoption campaign.

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