Chunks needs a pacemaker

Josie Butler is organizing this fundraiser.

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A little over a year ago, we adopted Chunks from the St. Louis English Bulldog rescue. We loved her immediately, and she got along great with our very high maintenance Italian Greyhound, Michael. Now, they love to play together and go on lots of walks.

Chunks loves to eat bananas, go on car rides, and walks, sunbathe in the yard, and chase chickens at her grammy's house. But Chunks is also a big couch potato (we call her our sweet potato) and she is just as happy snuggling up on the couch to watch football on Sundays... so long as you give her lots of belly rubs.

Near the end of this summer Chunks started having syncope episodes, where she would faint when she got excited (any time we picked up the leash or went in the car). We took her to the vet who told us she had a heart arrhythmia that caused her heart to speed up very fast, causing her to faint. Luckily, we thought, it was very easily treatable with some medicine.

A few weeks into her new medicine she was doing well and hadn't had any new episodes. But then, one night she fainted again. This time she was wearing a heart monitor and the vet noticed a second arrhythmia that caused her heart to slow down.. all the way to a stop. During that particular episode her heart stopped for 11 seconds.

Now, with two very different arrhythmias we could no longer treat her with medicine. The medicine for the first one would make the second one worse, and vice versa. Our only treatment option at this point is a pacemaker. With a pacemaker, Chunks will live a long and full life. Without a pacemaker, though, the vet estimates we have less than a year with her.

Chunks' mom, dad, and her fur-brother Michael want to keep her around as long as possible so she can keep sunbathing, lounging and chasing chickens for a long time.