Arlo has lepto

Hi, my name is Kristi. I’m 30 years old and lost my leg to cancer in 2016. Due to being disabled and only being able to handle working part time, I live with my parents. We currently have 6 dogs. My parents had one when I moved in and his name was Frankenstein. He was a chocolate lab who we got when I was 17 from the pastor of their church who had a litter. Frankie would have been 13 in January but we actually had to put him down this past Friday (12/10/21). He had bad hips and was suffering. That was a very hard for our family. We got our German shepherd from my brother in law's sister who had a litter the day I had my very first surgery on my foot, before we knew it was cancer. She was very kind and when I told my family I wanted a puppy while I was in the hospital from having my leg amputated, she gave me one of the pups for free, despite the fact that they were purebred. Nova is now five years old. When I moved in I brought one of my dogs with me from when I lived with my roommate and best friend. Her name is Kaizer and she is a pyrenees mix who just turned 8 years old. My mom got me Arlo, my golden retriever, for Christmas 2018. He came home a few days after Christmas. I had wanted a golden my whole life and never stopped asking for one. Arlo just turned three years old on November 15th. Our next dog, Wilder, I adopted when he was five months old in October of 2019. He is an Australian shepherd red heeler mix and he is two now. Last November my dad lost one of his elderly friends. He left behind two dogs older dogs that we took in because no one else wanted them and we didn’t want them to be euthanized. We tried to rehome them through a local rescue, Pets and People, but it is hard to find a home for an older bonded pair like Tommy and Thomasina.

If you have ever known a golden retriever, you know they are the happiest dogs in existence. Maybe even the happiest beings on this planet. Arlo is a golden through and through and he is the happiest boy no matter what. Like I said, he just turned three last month. Last week on Wednesday we started noticing he seemed off. He was acting normal but he wasn’t wanting to eat and he vomited a few times. We eventually got him to eat a little bit in the morning and the evening. Thursday he wouldn’t eat at all. He turned his head away from food. If you know Arlo, you know he loves food almost more than anything. Besides people and attention. So it was very alarming that he wasn’t interested in eating. My mom took him to the vet Friday. Meanwhile my dad and I were taking Frankie to another vet to be euthanized. He was suffering and we decided it was selfish to make him hold on for our benefit. While dealing with that loss, I found out Arlo was going to have to stay the night at Yukon Hills Animal Hospital. They thought he had a blockage. They gave him barium to see if it would come out, and it did. They did more xrays in the morning and thought that the blockage had passed to his colon and that he was okay to come home Saturday. They had given us two different medications. One for infection and one for pain. They told us to try to feed him bland food and if he didn’t poop by Sunday night to bring him back Monday. Throughout Saturday and Sunday we tried our best to give him his meds. He would make faces and cringe any time we tried to get anything close to his mouth. He started spitting out his pills and acting like he was going to bite when we tried to pill him. He wouldn’t eat still. We tried a large variety of things including turkey and white rice, pumpkin puree, plain Greek yogurt, peanut butter, meat, etc. Anything to get him to eat and he wouldn’t. He became very lethargic and didn’t want to get up. He stopped drinking and peeing. So Monday morning we took him back to the vet. We found out that he has leptospirosis. From what I’ve read online (and don’t quote me on this, I could be wrong. I will try my best to remember correctly) it says that he has an 80% chance or survival. If he does survive, he could have permanently damaged liver or kidneys. Lepto is a bacteria that is usually spread through an infected animal’s urine. We live in the country so we think that it was from wildlife that passed through our yard and urinated somewhere and Arlo sniffed it. Dogs can get it through their mucous membranes, their eyes or nose. Lepto is zoonotic so it can also be passed to humans. Spread to humans the same way, through infected urine. So now that we know what is actually wrong with Arlo (the vet said she thinks he never actually had a blockage, this just made it look like that because his intestines were inflamed), the vet is able to treat him accordingly. Which is by constant fluids to prevent damage to his kidneys and antibiotics three times a day and pain medications. His kidneys look fine so far and appear to be unaffected, but his liver is inflamed and that is super painful. When I went to see him today he just wasn’t Arlo. I can tell he is in a lot of pain. It’s hard to see because we just lost our 12 year old dog and now we might lose Arlo too. He’s supposed to be happy and healthy, he’s only three. I need him to be okay. We also have to treat all of our other dogs preventatively since they may have also been exposed. At this time none of the other five are showing any symptoms. Their treatment is just pills twice a day for two weeks. We need to treat our yard to try to kill any lepto that is still there. It can live in the ground for weeks to months. We are asking for help because we are struggling at the moment. The vet doesn’t know how long Arlo will need to be hospitalized. She doesn’t know if the illness has peaked and he’s going to get better from here or if he will get worse. So really it’s just a kind of wait and see situation with him. When we picked him up Saturday the bill was around $900. We have no idea how much the bill will be if/when he gets to come home. In addition to all our other dogs medications and the expenses for trying to kill whatever lepto is in our yard.. we just can’t afford it all. When I got cancer one thing I said I wanted to do before I die is go to Harry Potter World. In November my dad got a bonus at work and he and my mom put it back to help get me there. We are having to use that money to pay for all of this. And that is 100% fine with me. I would rather have Arlo okay, or even just more comfortable until he passes if he doesn’t make it, than me go to HP world ever. But we are worried it won’t be enough. We have never been well off. We don’t like to ask for help because we don’t want to take away from other people, especially when times are so hard on everyone but we literally have no other option. Thank you for reading this. I will try to post updates on Arlo as I get them. If you can’t donate, please share this. Thank you.