Trying to eat a meal isn’t easy when your up against a litter of your brothers and sisters who are all trying to get some of their mother’s milk.
But Nubby the puppy had an especially hard go at it.
You see, he was born without any front legs. This made it very difficult for him to eat and push past his brothers and sisters. Even the simplest of tasks were hard for Nubby.
A veterinarian suggested that he be euthanized because of his disability when he was just 4-hours-old.
But that thought was just too much for Lou Robinson and she would have none of it.
“His siblings were pushing him out of the way. He would have perished,” Lou Robinson, Nubby’s foster mom, told The Dodo. “He came home with me.”
Lou just loves animals. She has been a rescuer in Houston, Texas for a long time and is the founder of the group Warrior Educate About Rescue which teaches classes on how to compassionately care for animals.
The group even puts out an annual calendar with firefighters and rescue pets.
But taking care of a newborn puppy with to front legs was no easy task.
But Lou had her husband Mark on hand to help out.
They learned that Nubby would have to be bottle-fed at an incline so the puppy wouldn’t inhale the milk into his lungs.
That could cause aspiration pneumonia. But it wasn’t long before Nubby was growing strong.
“Day three came and went, day seven, day 10, day 16 and Nubby thrived. He thrived!” Lou said. “His eyes opened, his ears developed, he found his sounds, smells, and voice.”
But at around three weeks, Nubby’s health started to decline.
He was sneezing, wasn’t going to the bathroom, and wasn’t hungry.
He would just blow milk bubbles out of his nose.
The poor little baby had an esophageal abnormality.
“He had a pocket form in his esophagus that was trapping his milk,” Lou said.
Nubby was treated with antibiotics and put in an oxygen chamber since he was struggling to breathe.
“He was not giving up. He was fighting,” she says. “And as long as he has a chance at quality of life, we will fight to give him that chance.”
Nubby was eventually allowed to go home with Lou and her husband
At 5-weeks-old he was doing OK but doctors weren’t sure how severe his abnormalities were or if they couldn’t be helped at all.
But Nubby went on to defy all odds.
Eventually, they determined that his issues should resolve itself as he ages.
He’s smart, is active, and is super playful.
He learned to do an army crawl and worked hard to get up onto his back legs by pushing off from his face.
It wasn’t easy though.
Lou remembers him looking very “pissed off” in the process.
But now Nubby has grown up right before their eyes and is big and strong.
He can even get around with his special wheelchair.
Lou says that he’s “Very happy, needy, and rotten already,” she said. “Life finds a way.”
But he would have never gotten to that place if she didn’t believe in him and save him from a terrible fate.
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