Dilbert's Fund
Dilbert is our beautiful, funny little 1 year old Cardigan Welsh Corgi. Earlier this year he even found a bit of fame because of his big flappy ears. A couple of months ago however, we noticed what looked like dry skin on the tip of one of those ears. Little by little, his ear started to bald. The dry skin scabbed and started to bleed and nothing we did seemed to help it to heal. The vets started running tests to look for a cause, but as of yet we don't have one. He's on antibiotics for an infection he's got in the open sore but it's just getting worse, and it's started to become necrotic. Now it looks as if his other ear has started to go the same way.
At the end of this week, Dilbert will be having a biopsy to hopefully get to the bottom of what's going on with his ears. Luckily, we are part of a fantastic network of corgi owners, and were put in touch with the owner of another corgi in the UK who is suffering with the same problem. Their diagnosis was ear-tip vasculitis, and though rare, it is likely Dilbert is suffering from the same.
With the tests that have been run so far, plus the upcoming biopsy, his skin condition has already been very costly. We have insurance, but it only covers £500 per condition per year. This sounded like plenty, as he is (or was) young and healthy and had never had a vet bill more than that. But how naive we were. We've already hit that limit before we've even thought about the biopsy which will be over £600. And then there will be costs for any further tests and (hopefully) treatments. If the diagnosis is what we expect, he will need steroids, and if those do not work, the likelyhood is he may need to have the affected portions of his ears removed.
We love Dilbert with all of our hearts, and he brightens every single day. The fact that we just can't afford the upcoming fees makes us feel like we have failed as his human parents. Asking for help is not something that comes easily to us. We both have jobs which pay the bills but our debts from our student days still mean that we just don't have a financial buffer for situations like this. It's incredibly hard to admit that you need help to take care of your baby.
The nature of this means that we don't know exactly how much we'll need, but anything you can give, anything at all, will be gratefully received. We've seen how truly generous people have been in the past when other dogs have needed help, and just hope that we'll be even a fraction as lucky.
We just want our little man to be out of pain. We can tell it's extremely sore but he puts on a brave face. He's the light of our life and we adore every last fur on his body.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and for your generosity and support.
