Elsa & her best friend Blue

My name is Alice, myself and my beautiful friend Elsa have worked at the Townsville petstock store for 5 years now. Three years ago Elsa adopted a puppy she called blue from a rescue group, He is her best friend and has helped her through some tough personal situations. Unfortunately blue is the first dog in townsville and surrounding areas to be diagnosed with Ehrilichiosis.

About two weeks ago Blue started acting incredibly lethargic, had a dangerously high fever, vomiting and abdominal pain. After Many diagnostic tests, overnight stays at the emergency vet, and thousands of dollars spent trying to figure out what was wrong Elsa and her vet team were still left without answers. Eventually after an elimination process the clinic tested for Ehrliciosis 3 times with the results coming back negative, one of her vets insisted on sending a sample of his blood to Australian Biosecurity which resulted in a 100% positive result.

The treatment of this disease is an incredibly strong course of antibiotics, steroids and blood transfusions as needed.

Unfortunately he is not responding to treatment as well as he should be. After consulting with a specialist in blood borne diseases, they are now also considering he may have contracted another blood borne tick disease, called Babesia, at the same time he contracted Ehrlichiosis. Blue has always been on Nexgard flee and tick prevention, is inside majority of the day and does not go to areas that are high risk for ticks. He has just been incredibly unlucky to come into contact with two relatively rare (in residential areas) blood borne tick diseases.

Elsa is not the type of person to ask for help, she is always the one helping others. Her vet bills keep getting bigger and bigger they are currently sitting at $6500 and she will do anything she can to not lose Blue but she is drowning in vet bills after having major knee surgery only a few months ago and not being able to be on her full wage at work yet. It is heartbreaking to see him suffering and in so much pain. If there’s anyone, who can help even just the tiniest bit, it would mean the absolute world to her.

The only good thing that has come out of this horrible experience is being able to spend the time and educate our customers at work about the importance of Seresto collars to prevent their dogs getting sick, she spends so much time making sure our customers understand the importance of prevention especially now that this new disease has been discovered. Elsa would hate for anyone else to have to go through this ordeal and I feel like the least we could do is give back a little help to her in her time of desperate need

Please hug all your animals a little closer tonight so they know how important they are to your family ❤️