Success Stories

Bandit2, January, 2000

Bandit's story, as he told it to his foster Mom!

I had lived with one owner all my life and we were best hunting buddies. As a matter of fact, my owner bragged to all his friends that I had never lost a bird!

As we both grew older, my owner became very ill and was not able to take care of me properly. So at the age of 9 years old I ended up in the shelter, which was very stressful and made me bark a lot.

Fortunately for me, two volunteers from L.E.A.R.N. (Labrador Education and Rescue Network) stopped in at the shelter to pick up another Lab, and when they spotted me, they took me along too!

When my foster mom took me to the vet to get checked out, she found out I was heartworm positive. In addition, the vet found that I had entropion in one eye, a condition where the eyelid rolls inward so my eyelashes were rubbing against my eye. I had been born with this condition and had lived with it all my life, and the vet said I was lucky that at my age, it hadn't caused any permanent damage to the eyeball. This condition can be corrected surgically, but the surgery had to wait until I completed my heartworm treatment.

Before I started the heartworm treatment, my foster mom took me to meet a wonderful family in a nearby town who was looking for a nice older mature dog who was calm and wouldn't jump around and scare their young daughters and grandma, who lived with them. It was love at first sight and the family decided to adopt me once my heartworm treatment was completed.

After they adopted me, the entropion surgery was done. Thanks to LABMED, who helped to fund both the heartworm treatment and the eye surgery, I can spend the rest of my life watching over my new family and bringing them their paper every morning!