Saving Lily: A Story of Hope, Healing, and Community
Lily arrived at the Agoura Animal Care Center toward the end of 2024. This sweet German Shepherd puppy had been hit by a car, and suffered a fractured pelvis as a result. Although the kennel floor is no place to spend a healing journey, Lily dealt with it as best she could.
HHA took over Lily’s care, and brought her in to be examined by our veterinary partners at Malibu Coast Animal Hospital. Luckily for Lily, her young bones healed fully and quickly, to the extent that x-rays no longer showed any evidence of her fracture. As she began to feel better, her goofy, zoomies-driven personality started to shine, and the volunteers and shelter staff who worked with her fell more in love with her every day.
Lily was lucky enough to find an amazing long-term foster during the LA fires, and the two quickly bonded. Soon after taking Lily home, her foster dad noticed a persistent cough that wouldn’t clear and seemed to worsen over time. When she became increasingly lethargic, nauseous, and just not herself, Lily was taken to Oaks Vet Care, where it was determined that she had pneumonia. Because she was oxygen dependent, she was transferred to ACCESS Specialty Animal Hospital in Woodland Hills. The vets at ACCESS found that she was leaking air into her chest cavity—a serious condition called pneumothorax—which, if not treated, could cause her lung to collapse. Lily was sedated and had a chest tube placed to evacuate the air from her chest cavity, but the leakage continued. Poor Lily was transferred yet again to ACCESS’ Culver City facility for a CT scan. While the scan did show pneumonia in several lung lobes, it was still unclear what was causing the air leakage, which meant that our little trooper would have to go in for exploratory surgery to confirm the cause.
Post-surgery, the vet reported that Lily’s right front lung lobe had an abnormal look and had a lesion that was leaking air, and her right caudal lobe had a significant and concerning-sized bullae (air pocket) that was likely contributing to the leakage. As such, Lily’s right front and caudal lobes were removed, as well as the lymph nodes that were enlarged. Lily made it through surgery and remained in the hospital to recover.
The next few days were truly a rollercoaster—just when it seemed like she was out of the woods, her vets discovered that she was still leaking air. Her veterinary team continued to suction air out of her lungs, but unfortunately, she developed an alarming increase in air leakage and had to return to the operating room for a second, “hail Mary” surgery. Everyone close to Lily waited anxiously for the results—especially her foster, who’d spent the entire week driving back and forth to visit her in the hospital. Lily’s surgeon eventually phoned with hopeful news—her surgeon found no additional holes that would be causing air leakage. She flushed her lungs with 6 liters of saline to clean out any bacteria, changed the chest tube, and avoided removing any more lung tissue. Her pneumonia looked a great deal better, and she was encouraged to find that the antibiotics were effective. After surgery, Lily was no longer producing air through her chest tube and was discharged back to her foster home from the hospital 2 days later, where she is now recovering, regaining her energy, and even making neighborhood doggy friends!
Lily’s journey was intense, emotional, and frightening, but it truly highlights the incredible, lifesaving care that HHA is able to fund for the animals at the Agoura Animal Care Center. We are so thrilled that she is back home to recover and heal under the care of her loving foster, whose daily visits and doting care no doubt contributed to her healing. We are eternally grateful for our veterinarian partners at Malibu Coast Animal Hospital, Oaks Vet Care, and Access Specialty Animal Hospital, all of whom treat our shelter animals with the utmost dignity and care. We’d also like to thank the Tom Petty Estate and The Quint Family Foundation whose generous donations and fundraising gifts funded an enormous portion of Lily’s medical bills.
Lily’s story was no doubt one of life or death, and we couldn’t do it without the support of our donors. If you’d like to make a donation and learn how you can get involved, you can do so here.
Tamy Rieder, HHA President
Lily’s Foster Dad