Please Help Me Save My Dog
For those of you who follow me you probably know I got a puppy recently who I named Honeydew (this is her the day I brought her home)
(And this is a picture of her from yesterday)
I got Honeydew to be my ESA (emotional support animal) after encouragement from my therapists, psychiatrist, and family due to the fact that I have had issues with mental illness and behavioral problems since I was 6 years old (I am now 18) and animals give me a lot of relief from the symptoms and stress caused by this. When I brought her home everything was going great, I had a healthy, active, and happy puppy, that is until this Wednesday morning when I woke up to her being lethargic, vomiting, and refusing to eat. I took her to the vet, and she was a healthy weight and even a bit large for her age, she was alert albeit still lethargic and the vet told me it’s probably parasites/worms or it could be parvovirus (a very very very serious and fatal virus for puppies) but she was optimistic that Honeydew was just suffering from an upset stomach due to worms/parasites and gave her deworming medication but told me to get in touch with her immediately if her symptoms worsened. The next day Honeydew was back to her normal self, she was active, eating, and playful (though she still had some diarrhea) and because of that I let my guard down assuming the issue was resolved. I was wrong.Yesterday morning(friday) I woke up and went to check on her only to be greeted by clear vomit and diarrhea everywhere. She was again refusing to eat but not too lethargic, regardless I called the vet and made her an appt for their soonest availability, cleaned everything, and went to school for a few hours. When I got home I went straight to check on her and she hadn’t pooped or vomited so I was hopeful it had subsided, I, again, was wrong. After about 10 minutes I noticed how skinny she looked, as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks (I encouraged her to eat but she refused so I have made attempts to feed her I didn’t just leave her like that lol) and not even 5 minutes later she vomited blood three times in less than 10 minutes. I immediately called my vet who told us to call the ER who told us to come in ASAP so less than 25 minutes later we arrived and were rushed into an examination room. Honeydew was extremely dehydrated, and tested positive for parvovirus which the ER vet called lovingly referred to as “Ebola for puppies”.
I had the choice of having her hospitalized so she could have around the clock care which would have costed me well over $2,000 or I could try to take care of her at home for a (somewhat) more affordable price. I had no choice but to treat her out-patient since I have no way of funding her hospitalization which dropped her chances of survival from 80-90% to about 65% IF my care for her is PERFECT with absolutely 0 mistakes. The thing is I cannot afford her treatment at all, I’m a full-time college student working night shifts part-time and had been relying fairly heavily on my savings for the past 2 months due to my hours at work being cut down by more than half. She needs frequent vet visits to survive this and I absolutely can’t afford this. I had money saved for her standard vet visit where she would get vaccinated etc. but I never expected anything like this to happen. The ER visit cost me $420 that I don’t have and she’ll need to see the vet multiple times over the next 1-3 weeks which will probably put me out another $300-400+ that I don’t have.
I wouldn’t do this unless it was a last resort which it unfortunately is. She wants to live so so so so bad even the vet said that the fact she responded and tried to struggle against being poked with all those shots they gave her was a good sign. Watching as she struggles to raise her head, struggles to drink water and watching her try to walk and almost being unable to breaks my heart in a way I can’t explain. How she went from a happy go lucky baby girl to a fur covered skeleton in 24 hours absolutely baffles and devastates me. I’m doing my absolute best to be on top of her medications and giving her subcutaneous fluids but if I can’t afford to continue her treatment there is a very very good chance she will die.
I am begging you please please please donate if you can, even just $1 would help. Please help me save Honeydew
(link to Honeydew’s GoFundMe)
