NEED TO KNOW
- Tegan Strickland, an in-home caregiver, was working with one of her clients, who has dementia, when she discovered she had a dog
- The dog, Daisy, had been overfed for years and was facing serious health struggles
- So, Strickland adopted Daisy and has been documenting her weight loss on social media
Dogs come into our lives for a reason.
Tegan Strickland, an in-home caregiver, was headed over to a new client’s house when she learned the woman had a dog named Daisy. As her client’s daughter brought her into the home, she turned back and said, “By the way, she has a very fat dog, because my mother overfeeds him.”
While Strickland “expected a heavyset dog,” she was unprepared to see the sweet dachshund.
“I laid eyes on Daisy for the first time, and there are no words to describe what it is like to see Daisy in person for the first time,” Strickland tells PEOPLE. “I was very shocked. She’s very heavyset.”
The family didn’t know how old Daisy was or where she came from; all they knew was that their mother always overfed the pooch.
Strickland spent the first few months after meeting Daisy trying to change the feeding habits in the house. However, it was hard for her client to upkeep those habits when she wasn’t there.
“If you’re familiar with dementia, that’s a losing battle and that didn’t work out,” Strickland says. “I sat down with some of the family and asked, ‘Can you surrender Daisy to me so that I can attempt to rehabilitate her health?’ ”
“They agreed and I know that it was a weight lifted off their shoulders not to have a dog to care for anymore.”
Strickland officially adopted Daisy on May 20 and one of their first stops was to the vet. They established an immediate plan to reduce Daisy’s food intake and she was placed on a brand of dog food explicitly designed for weight loss. When surrendered, Daisy weighed 55 lbs.
Stickland says that, when Daisy first came home, she didn’t walk a lot.
“We didn’t take her anywhere. She sat in the corner of my house. We’d carry her outside to go potty and then carry her back to her corner,” she recalls. “She didn’t have much of a life when she first started here, but when she made her first vet visit, everyone fell in love with her.”
“The vets went above and beyond trying to check her out. They were fascinated by her,” Strickland adds. “She went straight into this healthy lifestyle, but after a few months, she’s lost a few pounds.”
Recently, Daisy weighed in at 45 lbs., already 10 lbs. down from her original weight.
Daisy is working through other health issues, including hypothyroidism, for which she’s on medication. The vets found that she had gallbladder sludge, which could be from rapid weight loss. Her teeth are also rotting and will need to be taken out after she loses weight and can be administered anesthesia.
While Strickland was debating how she would pay for all of Daisy’s medical procedures and needs, her veterinarian recommended she start a social media page for the dachshund.
Within a few videos, Daisy took off. People now come to the page to see her progress and journey. However, Strickand shares that users who stumble upon her page for the first time are usually confused and angry, believing she was the one who “had her for years and made her so heavy.”
“I am well aware Daisy is a shocking sight. I relate to the anger that they felt, and I felt the same emotions when I first laid eyes on her,” Strickland says. “How did she get this far into this condition? People are concerned. People love animals.”
Strickland also hopes to utilize Daisy’s social media page in the future as a tool to raise awareness for dementia and its impact.
“I would love to use it as an education on dementia, because a lot of people say, ‘Dementia or not, there’s no excuse [for Daisy’s weight].’ I understand that thought process, but dementia is such a complicated issue,” she adds. “I would love to use the platform to teach awareness on the possible consequences of dealing with that.”
But for now, Strickland is happy that Daisy is “doing well.” Thanks to her recent vaccination, she can now take Daisy out to explore nearby parks and get more exercise.
“She’s able to explore more. She walks more. The first time she went to park, she sat and didn’t know what to do. Now, when we take her out, she walks slowly,” Strickland shares.
“She loves to explore new things. She loves to play with my three corgis. She loves to sit outside in the sunshine,” she adds. “She’ll dig a little area and sit in the sun. She has so much fun. She’s got a brand new life for sure.”
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