Fiona Fights Back!

This is FiFi, short for Fiona.  She's the angel that entered my life this past spring.  She was battered and bruised, having been the victim of dogfighting.   Please note that her story starts off sad.  As a pup, FiFi was used as a bait dog.  She was rescued with severe bite wounds all over her body and trauma to her left eye, necessitating surgical removal.   When I met her, she had recently been transferred from a shelter to my hospital (I'm a veterinarian) because she had become septic and needed specialty care.  She slowly became better but lost her right hind leg and most of her tail following severe infection.  Despite it all, she retained exceptional courage and exuberance, handling every hurdle with grace.   She melted my heart when I first met her, scrawny and wounded.  She's now mine, and I'm proud of and inspired by her every single day.

I've set up this fundraising page for her - to help cover costs of her medical care.  Since she's joined my family, FiFi's had two emergency surgeries about 6 months apart.  She ate things she shouldn't have despite intense human supervision and major dog-proofing of our house and yard.  Both surgeries and the recoveries following were touch-and-go, but she prevailed through both.  This means that she's had about 6 surgeries in her first year and a half of life.  I tried to ask her why, after everything, she had to make herself sick these past couple of times.  She just looked at me with her one eye (the "whale eye"), calm and cool.  Maybe she had become bored?  Her early life was so intense, perhaps she needed a challenge?  It's easy to make light of the situation from this vantage point looking back because everything is now ok.  But every day in the ICU, we'd cuddle, and I'd tell her that everything was going to be fine.  Deep down, however, I couldn't stop worrying that I would lose my soulmate.

We hate to ask for money - it's not who we are.  But two surgeries so close together totaling $11-12,000 is extremely financially distressing to a veterinarian in residency.  Some people will tell me that that's an absurd amount of money to pay for an animal.  Others, like me, who view their dogs as their children, understand that the world is a better place with these souls in it - especially souls like Fiona's.

We are so grateful for any donation that you feel is appropriate.  And if a monetary donation isn't possible, we ask that you remember Fiona's story--what she's been through because of human ignorance.   I wish you could hear her "roar" when she's hobbling up to you with a Kong hanging out of her mouth, or the way people out in public who don't know us feel drawn to come meet her.   She reaches people in a special way, as if to say, "I've been through hell and back, and I'm still me.  Whatever you're going through, you'll get through."  She's someone we need on earth to balance the evil.  She's truly good.  She is love.  And while we initially saved her, it's more appropriate to say that she has saved me.

Thank you for hearing our story.

Fiona and Abby