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Help my BEAR boy breathe!

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Hi everyone,

My name is Carly and I am looking for help to save my poor boy BEAR (black labradoodle in the photo above). He is just 1 year old.

I came home from work last night around 10:30pm after a normal day with nothing out of the usual for the boys (let out in the morning/rip at the park mid afternoon/supper time walk around the block) but something was wrong with Bear when I got home. He wasn’t excited or moving around he kind of just stood there dazed breathing super weird. I waited an hour to check what was up, his neck felt super swollen but he wouldn’t let me look inside his mouth. After about an hour of his breathing declining I decided to go to an emergency vet. They were swamped and said I probably wouldn’t be seen until 3am and I had to work all day running our business so I decided to go home and see if a night of sleep would help.

The poor guy paced all night, couldn’t get comfy, hovered over my face straining to breathe. In the morning, we took him right back to the vet and they said it seems like something has caused him to suddenly develop an inflamed abscess in his throat (they won’t know what unless they do blood tests and a scope but could be a foreign object, could be a virus, Lyme disease, who knows but $2000 of scope/bloodwork wasn’t in the budget). So, we opted for the $500 of heavy dose meds to see if we could get the swelling down with just that.

They said if things don’t take a turn in the next 12-24 hours though he will need the blood tests and a CT scan to see what’s going on and then they will have to do surgery to drain and remove the abscess so that he can breathe (all costing around $5000). Knowing what caused it at this point seems to not be as much of a concern more than just dealing with the abscess to open his airways.

Right now it’s been close to 12 hours since he started the meds and he’s only getting worse. Tonight I finally saw into his throat because he was holding it so wide open to breathe and it’s almost swollen shut with a large ball on the side of his throat covering his whole airway. He won’t eat or drink because he can’t swallow.

I will update this tomorrow morning after I come back from work but my thought is that we are going to be going back to the emergency vet for him to get things properly dealt with. Right now he’s just sitting with his mouth open drooling and trying to get air in. He won’t lay down or relax because it puts more pressure into his neck making it harder for him to breathe.

We should have just got this done today as he is suffering but many of you know we just opened a new business in Halifax (and are working full time at that business ie no personal income coming in) and everything goes towards keeping that alive & well. We currently aren’t in a financial spot where taking excess money like this from the business for ourselves is a possibility.

He is scared just pacing the house staying right by our side trying to breathe and looking for help.

Anything would be helpful even $10-20. I know it’s a hard financial go out there for everyone but we know a lot of people so hoping if everyone donated a small amount we can quickly get the funds to get him emergency surgery ASAP.

He’s the only thing that keeps me going right now - taking my breaks to walk him and cuddle him at the end of the night and Charlie our other dog would be an anxious wreck without him.

I didn’t really know what else to do. Hoping a little from everyone goes a long way.

UPDATE!

10:30pm Saturday - he’s going back to vet now as he is deteriorating quickly - they are keeping him 24-48 hours to stabilize him (IV meds, feeding tube, etc.). They won’t sedate him right now because of his condition but they will do blood tests, X-rays, oral scope, a few other things they listed to see if they can figure out what caused this. After all of that when he’s more stable then they will look at doing a procedure for the abscess. Will send further updates along. Appreciate all the support so late on a Saturday night!

Sunday afternoon: Bear is still at the emergency vet (just resting in his kennel on pain meds) - he will likely stay tonight too - they are just keeping him on pain meds and IV antibiotic rounds and trying to reduce the inflammation so that they can hopefully safely sedate him for a procedure.


Sunday night UPDATE:
Went to visit my boy today - they are keeping him again overnight as there isn’t much improvement and they still don’t think it’s safe enough with the quality of his breathe and swelling to do any procedure or sedate him yet. So for now just another night of IV and antibiotics in hopes that tmmr some of the swelling will subside. They also have their full staff in tomorrow and all of the anesthetic team who will know better what they can safely do. I believe he’s getting a scan tomorrow to make sure no foreign object is stuck in there. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated so far we are almost 1/2 to the total cost and that is such a weight off my shoulders!

Monday Afternoon:
Getting a procedure finally done today to have a deep look in his throat so will be going under anaesthetic. Hopefully we will find something so we can avoid the CT scan

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Donations 

  • Emily Fearon
    • $25
    • 2 mos
  • Anonymous
    • $50
    • 3 mos
  • Tye Borden
    • $50
    • 3 mos
  • Kevin Jackson
    • $25
    • 3 mos
  • Rebecca Hodgkinson
    • $20
    • 3 mos
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Organizer

Carly Gillis
Organizer
Halifax, NS

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