It started as a routine lifesaving transfer like any other, but within hours, our staff would discover this young dog needed complex and risky surgery in order to survive.

On October 9th, Dane County Humane Society (DCHS) accepted a transfer of 15 dogs from an overcrowded shelter in Alabama. One of them was Brownie. When she stepped off the transfer truck, she was friendly and a little nervous, which is understandable given the long drive and change in her surroundings. As she realized she was in a safe place with caring and kind-hearted people, the one-year-old, brown brindle German Shepherd mix became more comfortable.

We thought Brownie would be another of the many young, healthy dogs we’ve brought to our shelter for a second chance at finding a loving family in our compassionate community. Within hours, our staff members were shocked to find she had extensive internal injuries that needed quick intervention.

Thanks to generous supporters like YOU, DCHS can act on a moment’s notice to provide immediate and complex veterinary care to any animal who comes through our doors. Double your impact today and ensure many more animals just like Brownie can receive vital and lifesaving veterinary diagnostics and care.

Upon arrival, every animal receives a basic intake exam. During Brownie’s, our veterinarians were alarmed to discover they could not hear her heart or normal lung sounds on the right side of her chest. They immediately took x-rays, which revealed she had a diaphragmatic hernia: a hole in her diaphragm that allowed her intestines, liver, and stomach to push from her abdomen into her chest cavity. This meant her lungs couldn’t properly inflate, and Brownie was struggling to breathe. Our team also found an indentation on her rib cage, which indicated the injuries could have come from a traumatic accident, like being hit by a car.

We’ll never know exactly what happened to cause the hernia, but our team knew Brownie’s only chance for survival was a complex surgical procedure to move her organs back to where they should be and to fix her injured diaphragm.

Fortunately, in addition to our skilled veterinary team, DCHS has strong partnerships with specialist veterinary surgeons in our community, and one of them agreed to come to DCHS to perform Brownie’s hernia repair. Even with a specialist and our expert team, the procedure Brownie needed was highly complex and risky. We knew there was a heartbreaking chance she wouldn’t make it through the surgery.

We also knew we had to try.

Thanks to the skills, care, and compassion of our team, Brownie beat the odds and made it through surgery. Our staff and volunteers carefully monitored her during her immediate recovery. In those crucial early days, she needed a chest tube to drain excess fluid. Every day for a week, our veterinarians checked her progress and drained the fluid from that tube, until Brownie had recovered to the point that they could remove it.

After another week, Brownie was ready for our veterinarians to perform her spay surgery. Finally, she was ready to find her new home.

When Brownie arrived almost a month before, our canine behavior specialists noted she was nervous in her new surroundings. Although she became a bit more comfortable with time, we nonetheless believed she would do better in a home environment – Brownie had been through a lot, from the trauma that damaged her diaphragm to the procedure to repair it. A foster family could monitor her recovery and give her all the patience, quiet, and care she needed.

It came as no surprise that one of our compassionate volunteer fosters stepped up.

“I was asked to foster Brownie, and after reading her story, my heart went out to her, and I quickly said yes!” says Chris. “I wanted to give her a quiet and loving home.”

Brownie took to her new foster quickly, showering Chris with kisses when they first met. 

“She loved all the attention, new toys, and quietness,” Chris reports. 

“She loves to play with her toys,” Chris continues. “She will toss her ball around and chase it, all by herself. She also likes to play fetch but needs to work on dropping the ball. When she has the ball in her mouth and won’t drop it, I kick a bigger ball around like a soccer ball, and she runs after it, so we kind of play soccer.” 

Chris lives out in the country with a fenced-in backyard, and Brownie has been enjoying all the experiences her foster home brings. 

“While we were outside one day, she just stopped and sat down as the deer ran by, heading to the woods,” Chris recalls. “She just sat there like, where did they go? At times, she will look up at the birds flying over.” 

At just over one year old, Brownie is still a bit of a puppy. “She does like to get into things,” Chris admits, “but she is a loving, sweet puppy! At night, we snuggle on the couch and watch television together. She likes her pets and belly rubs.”

During her first few weeks in foster with Chris, DCHS’s team diligently worked to find Brownie’s new home. Several compassionate community members showed interest in the pup, and our staff counseled each one about Brownie’s specific needs.

“After getting the call that people were interested, my heart was happy for Brownie and sad I was going to miss her,” Chris recalls.

Chris brought Brownie back to the shelter for a meet-and-greet with a potential adopter, but the interested family didn’t show.

“On my way home, I thought maybe I could become what everyone warned and joked with me about,” Chris says. “A foster failure.”

At DCHS, we prefer to call these “foster successes.” They’re not about failing at fostering; they’re about finding unexpected joy in realizing the pet you were helping prepare for someone else’s family was actually meant to stay with yours. 

Chris thought about all the ways Brownie had found her way into her heart. “I do enjoy taking her out in the backyard in the morning and watching her watch the deer, playing with her, and watching her smell all the smells on our walks,” Chris says. “She is quite the little independent puppy, rolling the ball around and throwing it and running after it.” Chris knew their bond was deepening, and she really began to wonder if Brownie was already home. 

“My favorite part is how excited she gets when I come home,” Chris continues about Brownie, adding it’s “always a joy to see her all excited with her little butt and tail wagging and tons of kisses.”

Chris consulted with her adult children, who regularly visit with their own dogs adopted from humane societies. She wanted to make sure the fur babies would all get along.

“My son's dog and Brownie already met and played well with each other, so my guess was Brownie would do the same with my daughter's dog,” Chris explains. “She has since met both dogs and loves playing with both of them together and one-on-one.”

With her heart and mind at ease, Chris made it official and adopted Brownie.

Chris says, “We are all so happy she is part of our family!”

So far in 2024, we’ve transferred over 1,000 animals to DCHS from other animal rescue groups, many of them overcrowded southern shelters. Because of YOU, each of those animals had a second chance to find a happy new beginning and over 700 of them received specialized veterinary care from our expert team. 

Contribute to the care of animals just like Brownie in our shelter and community by giving today. Thanks to our generous matching gift challengers, gifts made before 11:59 pm on #GivingTuesday, December 3rd, are DOUBLED up to $50,000.

Together, we can save thousands more animals in 2025!