April 2023 — Tink, a critically ill, two-month-old puppy, was abandoned by her breeder at an emergency animal hospital in Manhattan. Severely malnourished and struggling to breathe, Tink weighed just five pounds, less than half of what a pit bull puppy her age should. She was also fighting aspiration pneumonia triggered by a congenital condition called Persistent Right Aortic Arch (PRAA), where an abnormal vascular band traps the esophagus so food cannot reach the stomach, leading to starvation, regurgitation, life-threatening if untreated.

Tink spent a week hospitalized while specialists stabilized her pneumonia. Once cleared, she underwent laparoscopic surgery to remove the vascular band, a remarkable stroke of luck, as many PRAA puppies require far more invasive rib-splitting procedures.

Tink’s road to recovery would be long. Her esophagus had formed a diverticulum, a pocket where food became trapped and regurgitated. For weeks, we fed her micro-meals, kept her upright in a front-facing carrier and monitored her ability to gain weight. Slowly, she thrived, integrating into her foster pack on our (foster) Puppy Farm, Charlotte’s Run, where she learned how to be a puppy.

By the time Tink was five months old and just under twenty pounds, her spirit was limitless. Her diverticulum was shrinking as she grew, and she was transitioned to four small meals a day, learned cues form resident dogs and her foster mom alike, and blossomed socially. After 3 ½ months in our foster program, she was ready to be adopted!

Today, Tink is living the full, enriched, deeply loved life she deserved from the start with her incredible family, longtime members of our community who had previously adopted from us,  in Georgia. You can follow her journey via @tinkthetank638 and see her full history under #AdoptTinkMBC