Scootin’ Ain’t Livin’: Let’s Get Lila Her Legs Back

Lila is my 6-year-old French bulldog and the heart of my home. A spinal tumor is stealing her ability to walk, and her only chance is a $5,000–$7,000 surgery to remove it. I’ve done everything I can on my own—but now I need help to give her the chance she deserves.

Here’s the fully story…

This GoFundMe is for my sweet baby girl, Lila. Formally know as, Delilah Jane, aka Falafelcopter.

I’ve had Lila since she was about 12 weeks old. She was bought from a one-legged lady living in South Phoenix… it was weird, yes. Lila was a massively stubborn pain in the butt as a puppy. She held true to being a bully breed. For months, I stood in the backyard cheering for her to go potty outside and giving her tons of accolades. It was such a feat to finally get that training under her belt. The next feat was walking on a leash… I had an 18-month-old at the time, and she was on the bottom of his stroller every walk we took for at least 3 weeks. It’s crazy to think 6 years have flown by…

I’ll just say this. Lila is single-handedly the greatest, most well-behaved, and loving dog I have ever had the honor of caring for. She is the reason I now have 3 other rescue Frenchies. I don’t think there are even words to describe what this beautiful creature means to me and how wonderful she makes my life just by being in it.

Now, to get to the point of my story and why I am here. At the beginning of November 2024, Lila started slipping on the tile floor in the house. I remember thinking, wow that’s weird, with 4 dogs I can’t ever keep this floor clean enough for her to slip. About a week later, I was taking Lila in for her annual exam and vaccinations. I mentioned something about her hind legs seeming to get a little wobbly. The vet dismissed it… said not to worry about it. Everything looked really good with her.

Two weeks later, her back legs were turning into spaghetti noodles, and she was slipping more.

I took her to see another vet, and we decided to put her on steroids to see if maybe there was some sort of inflammation that might’ve been causing the issue, and kind of try to troubleshoot from there. Well, over the next two weeks, she started losing more and more function in her hind legs.

At that point, I then had to take her to see a neurologist. They did an x-ray and then an MRI.

The MRI quickly showed a large mass in her spinal cord. The doctor told me it could be one of two things. Being we’re in the state of Arizona, a lot of pets and even people end up with Valley fever, and Valley fever can show itself in very weird ways in the body. So the first hope was maybe this was just Valley fever and that was causing the mass within her spinal cord. The only other viable option was that it was cancer and the doctor was like, I really just don’t think that’s the case because she’s so young. She’s in good health, it just doesn’t seem like cancer is what we’re dealing with.

After testing and even doing a month of medication, Lila’s condition continued to decline. Valley fever came back negative and there was zero response to any sort of medication.

So here we are now, the only option for what she has is cancer. At this point in time, we don’t know exactly what kind because I’ve exhausted all of my financial options just to get us to this point. Her neurologist has quoted $5000 to potentially $7000 to go in and remove this mass, to potentially help lengthen the life that she still has ahead of her.

Currently, Lila now has no ability to stand on her hind legs, she can only scoot around. She is having trouble with accidents, which is completely understandable if she can’t feel anything from where the mass is and back.

I’m hoping by putting this out there maybe others that have an animal in their life that means the world to them will see this and might be able to help me in making sure that she gets to live a long life like she should.