Severely Ill Dog Found In NE OKC Being Nursed Back To Health

A local non-profit is helping a young dog get back on her feet after she was found near death in northeast Oklahoma City last weekend. Willow's rescuers believe she might have been wandering the area for more than a month, but they found her in the nick of time.

Willow was in such bad condition that the people who found her believe she was simply looking for a place to die. Mike Plunkett was letting his dogs out last Sunday morning when he heard a strange bark.

“She was laying down in the bottom of this depression,” Plunkett says, describing a secluded area in his wooded backyard. Willow growled when he came close, so he went to the house and brought back some treats.

Plunkett says, “The wind was blowing in the right direction and luckily she smelled the food and her nose went up. I could tell she was hungry.”

By the time he posted photos of the dog online and called his friend Katie Hawk from Good Dogma to help, Willow was on the back porch. Hawk says when she got to the house, “she immediately greeted me with tail wags and kisses and completely annihilated that stereotype of being a pitbull.”

You can tell Willow gave birth recently, but her puppies are nowhere to be found.

Hawk says, “My two cents is that she had the pups, they passed, and she gave up.”

Willow’s new foster mom Abby Case theorizes, “My feeling would be that she got pregnant and got dumped because she was pregnant, but that’s just pure speculation.”

Despite all the pain she was clearly in, Willow was still friendly, and Hawk rushed her to an emergency clinic. The veterinarian estimates Willow is only about a year old, despite the obvious stress on her body. Besides being treated for severe mange, hookworm and other infections, Case says Willow also “got staples in her eyelids and she had some pretty bad lacerations on top of her head that she’s got staples in as well.”

Case is now taking care of Willow at her home as she recovers, a place that seems familiar to the dog.

“The first time she came in my house,” Case says, “she circled my living room and then immediately got up on the couch and sat there like she had been there forever. She knew what a bed was and she wanted to sleep with us immediately, first night.”

The Underdogs Rescue is currently covering thousands of dollars in medical costs for Willow. She has at least a couple more months before she is ready for adoption, and her story remains a mystery, but Plunkett says he would not hesitate to do it all over again.

“I’m not just going to let an animal die because of food or whatever. It’s just not right,” he says.

To find out how you can help with Willow’s medical expenses, click here.