A Central Florida family is reunited with its pet eight months after the animal was left with a veterinarian to be euthanized over painful tumors growing in her ears.
Candy, a Maltese belonging to the Oaks family, had tumors in her ears that the family could not afford to treat.
The decision to end the dog’s suffering prompted Angela Oaks to travel to the Mayfair Animal Hospital in Winter Park.
“First of all, (I) sat in the parking lot for a long time because I didn’t know if that’s what I wanted to do,” Oaks said. “I just felt bad because I couldn’t afford the surgery, and I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do.”
Oaks decided to sign the papers, and she paid a fee to have Candy euthanized.
“I told my daughter she was in doggy Heaven,” Oaks said.
However, eight months after the dog was left to be euthanized, Oaks received a call from the veterinarian, Dr. Peggy Stubblefield.
“She told you they never euthanized Candy?” Local 6’s Jessica Sanchez said.
“Yes,” Oaks said.
Oaks found out that Candy was being kept alive.
Stubblefield offered only a limited explanation of why the dog was kept alive against its owner’s wishes, Sanchez reported.
“I can say when I see a dog that is vivacious, happy, wriggling, coming up to everybody in the room, my first impulse is to keep it alive as long as possible,” Stubblefield said.
Stubblefield said she tried to contact the Oaks family to propose a treatment plan for Candy.
“We tried by telephoning them by the number on the euthanasia request, and that’s all I can say, I can’t say anything else,” Stubblefield said.
Local 6 reported that a fill-in veterinarian at Mayfair took pity on Candy, performed the surgery to fix her ears and rescued her from the hospital.