misskrichmond
Junior Member
I am currently a resident of the state of Virginia and I am fostering some dogs for the local humane society that happens to be located in west Virginia. I need to know the rights I have to ownership of these dogs. We received Violet from a transport from Georgia at the end of December. She was pregnant. She had her puppies on January 2, 2007. Violet and the puppies live with us in Virginia and the puppies were born in Virginia. The lady working for the humane society would not let us take her to the vet even though she had a ruptured placenta and a baby was stuck in the birth canal. I had to help her have every puppy, 8 lived and 4 died. Since then we have been taking care of violet and all 8 of the puppies. We have provided food, shelter, some medications, etc...for them. Recently violet became very ill. We were unable to reach the lady working for the society, so we had to take her on to the vet for fear that she may die. Her temperature was 106.7 and we were afraid she would start having seizures. The vet diagnosed her with pyometra (infected uterus). This condition is life threatening, so she had to have emergency surgery. We attempted to contact the lady from the humane society again and was unsuccessful. Shortly before the surgery she became septic and the fear for her life intensified. An 8 in. diameter bag of pus was removed from her uterus and she was also spayed at that time due to fear of further infections. She had to remain at the vet for a week because she was so unstable. During that time she developed septic abscesses on her teats. The infection was essentially moving from the inside out because her flesh was "rotting" off. She is recovering remarkably well, but the bill for her visit was over $1200.00. We do not know if we will be reimbursed by the humane society, but our main concern is our rights towards keeping violet and the pups and finding homes for them ourselves. Could we demand that the humane society allow us to adopt violet and the pups since we have paid this huge vet bill? Could we demand reimbursement for the bill and pay the adoption fees for all of the dogs? Do they have the right to take the dogs from us whenever they please and/or deny us adoption rights? We are really concerned because we have become very attached to these dogs and we want to see that they go to a good home, not just shipped off to a rescue or given to the wrong person. Please help us if you can. We don't want to lose our babies!!! Thanks.What is the name of your state?
