Barney was born in Romania in June 2016 and was abandoned on the streets by his owner along with his five siblings. They were all rescued by Ama Dog Rescue. Barney’s owner saw a picture of him on the Rescue’s Face Book page, fell in love with him and wanted to help him. She adopted him in October 2016 but he did not arrive on the date originally given as he developed kennel cough and had to recover from that first. Then, shortly after contracting kennel cough, he was playing, slipped off some furniture and developed a limp. The Rescue kept him for another few weeks and then assured Barney’s owner that he was fit to travel to the UK. After travelling for two days, he finally arrived in the UK on Friday 13th January 2017. When Barney’s owner first met him he was petrified and seemed to be in quite a lot of pain. She took him the following day to her vet who gave him a check-up and medication for his pain. After x-rays were taken, it was clear that Barney had a hip displacement and would need corrective surgery to give him a chance of keeping his leg so Barney had the operation during February. Although the operation was successful, there was only a 50% chance of the leg being saved unless Barney’s owner paid for post operative care in the form of hydrotherapy to strengthen sufficiently Barney’s leg muscles to enable him to put any weight on the leg as he hadn’t used it for a long time. The other problem was that, due to all Barney’s problems, he had missed out on socialising with people and other dogs. He was scared of so many things. He was afraid to go outside of the garden, scared of strangers, barked at the slightest noise – he also chewed everything in sight! However, Barney’s owner told us that he is a loving, affectionate, playful boy. He was very clean, he was intelligent and he was keen to learn. Barney’s owner told us that she wanted to do whatever she could to help him overcome his problems to enable him to live a normal life.

The Foundation’s Committee decided to help Barney’s owner with the costs of hydrotherapy and also a dog behaviourist. As you can imagine, Barney’s owner has paid out quite a lot already and she just did not have the extra money for the on-going rehabilitation costs. We knew it wouldn’t be a ‘quick fix’ but Barney’s owner was determined and she has certainly put a lot of work in to help Barney.

The hydrotherapy certainly helped to strengthen Barney’s leg muscle and, because of that, Barney’s owner is able to take Barney out more which, in turn, is helping to socialise him.