12/22/2025
**Please refrain from hateful or negative comments. The goal of this post is to help Sadie**
** UPDATE 12.22.25: we received the results of Sadie’s full blood panel today. They have ruled out diabetes, but the liver panel is inconclusive. She is heartworm and tick borne illness negative. We are collecting a urine sample so that she can be tested for a urinary tract infection. The vet still believes she could have cushings or another illness. We will keep everyone posted**
As many of you know, Mayberry 4 Paws has been temporarily closed to intake for a while. Previous to this, we had for some time been focused on intaking medical cases in need of help, doing what we could with the most urgent cases. These were sometimes strays and other times owner surrenders from homes that could no longer keep their dog. But then, mounting vet bills caused us to make the difficult decision to pause intake while we paid off our vet bill and rebuilt our vet fund. During this time we have still been trying to help people find homes for dogs with other rescues or by doing courtesy adoption posts on our page. It’s a limited way of helping, but it’s all we’ve been able to do.
We had been on the verge of getting to our vet fund minimum. The minimum amount that we felt comfortable operating on while providing care to the dogs already with us. Then, this past Friday, a call for help came from one of our vets. A person had come in with a 9 year old heeler named Sadie. Sadie’s owner had unexpectedly passed away just a few days before during a lung biopsy surgery. How heartbreaking for Sadie’s owner, the owner’s family and for Sadie. This was a terrible situation.
Sadie had been left with no "after life plan” and no one in the family was prepared to take Sadie in. To add to the challenge, Sadie had been experiencing extreme thirst and frequent urination/accidents since March. The person who had brought Sadie to the vet was a relative of the owner. They had brought Sadie in to be euthanized.
Our vet called us with a desperate plea knowing that we had not yet reopened to intake. But she had to try. She saw something in Sadie that said “Please try”.
Since we had not yet reopened to intake, we were hesitant. As a first option, we offered financial assistance for the upcoming vet bill to diagnose what might be going on with Sadie medically. Without tests the vet was not sure but suspected Diabetes or Cushings. In an attempt to keep Sadie with her extended family, we wanted to see if financial assistance might change things. However, the family felt they could not take on a dog, let alone one with medical issues.
One of our volunteers, Dena, was able to stop in at the vet as she lives nearby. She met Sadie. She took the picture in this post. We discussed more. We talked about the fact that we were just now at our vet fund minimum and that intaking Sadie would bring about additional vet bills that would pull us further away from reopening general intake to medical cases. We talked about the fact that, if we said no, Sadie woukd be euthanized.
But we said yes to Sadie.
Dena offered to foster and took her home after we had the vet run a full panel. Results should be back later today and then we will figure out the next steps. We know that taking Sadie means more time and effort to raise funds to reopen to intake, but for now we are focused on Sadie. Sadie is safe.
Please, keep Sadie in mind during this holiday season. She needs love, prayers and all the good vibes. We are hopeful she can be brought back to good health so that she can find a new family of her own.
We will keep everyone updated on Sadie. If you would like to make a donation to her care, it can be made through PayPal at [email protected], you can mail check to our address (137 Skyview Lane, Mt. Airy, NC 27030) or click the donate button below. If you or someone you know would prefer to make a cash donation, please message our page to arrange that. Anyone interested in donating through Venmo, one of our volunteers can accept donations and send them to us. Her Venmo is de er
