After spending days in a house with a human corpse, three pets are looking for a new home.
Okotoks-based charity Pound Rescue recovered two dogs and a cat on May 10 from a home on a First Nations reserve.
The animals were found alongside the bodies of a woman and a dog. The animals were in poor condition after ingesting an unidentified substance.
Rosa Kurtz, president of Pound Rescue, could not comment on the cause of death for the woman or the dog, the substance ingested by the surviving animals, the name of the reserve where the animals were found or how long the corpse went undiscovered, although she approximated that it was between two and seven days.
"These two [dogs] obviously were distressed," Kurtz said.
"We had to pick them up and take them to the vet, but since [the unidentified substance] was already in their system, there was nothing they could really do other than the IV to to flush it out."
After that treatment, one dog required additional IV therapy to treat severe dehydration, and the other suffered from signs of distress, including a rapidly accelerated heart rate.
After a few days of successful treatment and recovery, both dogs are now in great condition and physically active. They will soon be up for adoption along with the cat.
"It's partially deaf and it's a female, which was shocking because orange cats are usually not females, but it's a female and she's now with a foster in High River and the [dogs] are in Calgary right now with a foster," said Kurtz.
The cat is aptly named Ginger, and the dogs are Fox and Arctica, believed to be an eight-month-old papillon-Jack Russell mix and a four-month-old Maremma-lab cross, respectively.
"They become very attached, because they went through some trauma," said Kurtz. "The eight-month-old, Fox, she was quite thin and so underweight for her size and stuff. We weren't sure how long they were without food."
Learn more about Pound Rescue and adoptions on its website.
