Timber has always been a dog that people immediately fall in love with, his giant size and equally giant personality have made him the best dog and companion for his 9 years with me. He was recently diagnoses with Osteosarcoma in his front right leg after we noticed a slight limp back in December. He otherwise has been in perfect health, and we've had many veterinarians comment on how great of shape he is in. People still ask us on the street sometimes if he is a puppy!

The problem with Osteosarcoma is that it's a cancer that is not "treatable" and once there is evidence of a tumor, your options are limited. Being a bone cancer, it quickly eats at the bone and becomes more and more painful as the cancer progresses. Without any kind of treatment, we were told that dogs don't make it longer than 1-3 months after diagnosis. Definitely not the news anyone wants to hear and devastated was an understatement for how I felt.

Timber is still very active, loves his walks, playing with his brother, car rides and his favorite thing, laying in the creeks at the nature center. I could not take that all away from him for whatever time we have left. The good news is, he is currently on some oral pain medications that have helped a ton and he is acting like his normal self! The bad news is, the cancer will continue to spread and get more painful for him.

Aside from oral pain meds to help him live as normal of a life as possible a treatment that can be helpful is radiation therapy. This will target the cancer cells in the tumor, potentially shrink the tumor, and give him pain relief from it. We've done tons of research trying to see how well this has worked and it seems to have helped a lot of families in a similar situation. It requires 4 treatments under general anesthesia, and IV infusions of a drug called zolendrate which helps strengthen the bone, and then Timber will hopefully be with us for at least 6 months or more with no big changes to his day-to-day life.

On top of that, there is a cancer study through Yale that he is able to enroll in through this treatment that has promising results in helping his body to fight off the cancer and increase his longevity. He has already received the first round of this vaccine and will get a booster in a few weeks.

We are hopeful that all of this will help Timber live his best happy life as long as he can. As I am sure you can guess, this treatment is not cheap. I have had Timber on pet insurance since he was a puppy, and paid more for the highest coverage plan, which was 90% coverage. Just last year, Nationwide dropped Timber from this policy because it was "no longer profitable." It has been incredibly frustrating, since Timber has been so healthy the whole time I was paying expensive premiums for him and now that I need the insurance they dropped him down to 50% coverage. We have tried calling and fighting this, but they will not budge, and we cannot switch to a different insurance because now Timber has a preexisting condition and would not be covered.

All of this to say, I do not want money to be an issue in Timber getting the treatment he deserves, so he will be getting the radiation, and luckily half of it will be covered by my pet insurance, but I am still looking at close to $6,000-7,000 out of pocket for it unfortunately. I would be so grateful to any assistance to help with his care and want to thank anyone who donates anything to him, that means the world.

Thank you so much to everyone that has already reached out and send well wishes to Timber and our family. He has touched the hearts of so many, and I am so grateful to have such incredible people around who love him as well.

We'll keep everyone posted with updates of how he is doing!!