Our Patients

Tinker

“When we found Tinker, now a 3-year-old Anatolian Shepherd (or Kangal), she was a 6-week-old abandoned puppy left for dead next to a junk yard not far from our house in Turkey. At the time, she was severely malnourished, suffering from sarcoptic mange, infested with dozens of fleas and ticks, as well as bruised and battered from attacks by stray dogs – and cruel people – in the area. We quickly adopted her as our own, and with the help of a local vet, we were able to nurse her back to health in just a few weeks. The vet told us later that Tinker probably had less than 12 hours to live when we found her.

“We returned to the U.S. a few months later, and Tinker remained happy and healthy until she was about a year old and went into season for the first time. Her fur began to fall out in patches, her skin became discolored, and she developed open sores over various parts of her body. Her ears became so scabby and itchy that she had to wear an Elizabethan collar 24/7 in an often futile effort to prevent her from shaking her head and covering our house in blood. We took her to multiple vets, all of whom improperly diagnosed her with various forms of mange, and were more happy to charge us an arm and leg for weekly injections and other that did nothing to alleviate Tinker’s discomfort. My wife spent literally hundreds of hours researching symptoms on the internet, and we tried what seemed like dozens of home remedies to cure our baby… but nothing worked. Numerous times, we were on the verge of putting Tinker down in order to put her out of her misery.

“After nearly two years of Tinker’s suffering, we finally discovered White Oak Animal Hospital in Fredericksburg, who ultimately referred us to the Veterinary Dermatology Clinic of Richmond. Unlike the numerous other vets we’d tried, Dr. Williamson spent over an hour evaluating Tinker during her very first visit and actually listened to our explanation of the symptoms. She immediately seized upon the connection between Tinker’s heat cycles and her skin condition; something every other vet had dismissed as irrelevant. Dr. Williamson quickly prescribed a regimen of medications to get Tinker healthy enough to be spayed, and within a few days she began to improve. It’s now three months later, and Tinker is almost back to her normal self. Her fur has all grown back, her skin is healthy, and her ears are soft and velvety with only minor scarring. She spends her days chewing bones, growling irritably at her ‘brother’ (Mack, our 4-year-old Siberian Husky), and herding the entire family around the house just like old times.”