Coal's Healing Journey: Your Support Needed

Meet Coal. He is an almost 2 year old lab mix with an amazing personality. Coal has really helped us in many ways. One big thing is helping our daughter get over her fear of dogs. She now loves him so much and she's been so important to get him to eat and take his meds as he loves her just as much as she loves him. He was rescued from a kill shelter in Arkansas and we adopted him from a local group here in Peoria. We didn't learn until a few months after we adopted him that he was born with a birth defect in both of his hind legs that would require surgery.

In February, we did the first surgery and it went well. Recovery was hard and took longer than the vet anticipated. He eventually bounced back and was fine and we have been working on paying that off ever since.

We thought that we would have more time between surgeries but in August, we had to do surgery on his other leg. This surgery has not gone well and we are struggling to be able to afford his after care. He is currently on He developed a staph infection and another bacterial infection. The newest medication that we have to administer must be handled with gloves, as it could have an adverse effect on people.

Coal needs to stay on a fairly tight timescale of regular med doses which has taken a large toll on our sleep. Our big guy takes very high doses of pain killers and sedation meds in order to keep him quiet and sleepy. Including his antibiotics, we are giving him 16 pills per day along with a joint supplement we need to break up so we can get him to swallow that too. He gets one set of meds twice daily and another set of meds every 8 hours to manage his pain and keep the infections from getting worse. His care so far has been about $10,000.

We hate to ask for assistance but we are really struggling keeping up with his care and our regular bills. We didn't know we would need insurance and as soon as the vet told us the issue, it became a preexisting condition and no insurance that we have found would cover it.