We’re Bentleys owners, Michael and Emily.

Bentley has not had the best year this year; it all started when a growth on his leg wouldn’t heal. Perplexed, we took him to the vets several times. Each time they popped the growth and said it would be fine. We trusted them and each time left hoping this would be the time it finally healed, but it never did. Then Bentley developed an infection in one of his toes, so we went back again, mentioned his toe and then pointed out the growth on his leg again; finally we were taken seriously and Bentley was taken in for surgery and had his toe removed as well as the growth on his leg. Thankfully we had pet insurance, and Bentley began to heal like a trooper.

Then we got the news that nobody wants to hear when the vets called; our gorgeous boy had skin cancer that is fast spreading in dogs and often fatal. As any pet owner knows, when you get news like this it is devastating, and quite simply he is our world. We were told we had to make decisions quickly due to the nature of this cancer, and were referred to an animal hospital.

Thankfully, as previously stated we had pet insurance which meant that we could act quickly and after biopsies and chemotherapy and then a second round of biopsies we had everything crossed, but unfortunately the news wasn’t what we wanted to hear. Bentley has developed several new lumps, and whilst after tests they’ve confirmed they’re not skin cancer, we just don’t know what they are. His oncologist is worried they could potentially be another form of cancer, something autoimmune, or something else that needs further treatment.

He now requires further surgery and potentially further treatment to combat whatever this is, and we’re now at the limit for our pet insurance.

This is a horrific position to be in, as he is still happy within himself so we want to try and give him every opportunity he can to fight whatever this new issue is, but we face potential further treatments and surgeries and now no longer are covered by his insurance. As you can imagine these things build up very quickly, but as we said we want to give him the best chance possible, which is why we’ve set this up. We want to fight for him in the same way he’s fought like a trooper this year.