Gertie's Race Against Bone Cancer

Hi everyone, meet our dog Gertie!!!! She is 5 years old and is a giant bundle of excitement and love. She is the best doorbell and the most annoying doorbell! She is also the most perfect hiking buddy ever!!! She loves to chase squirrels and deer!

She started limping last month and I took her to the vet for x-rays and they came back as bone cancer! A very aggressive kind, and said she had about 2 months left to live!! OMGosh!!! She’s only 5!! Great Danes average 8-10. Because of her weight, she’s not a good candidate for amputation and she would still need chemo even if I went that route. So I found a pet oncologist who does radiation and the chemo treatment. Her X-rays showed the cancer hadn’t spread yet, so she’s perfect for radiation. It’s called PetCure Oncology for anyone else in my situation, and the closest one to me was in Pennsylvania. I scheduled it, and booked a hotel for the week, and they took phenomenal care of her. Everyone greeted her by name, they all knew her story as soon as we arrived, the rooms were big enough for her (a lot of vets have small crowded waiting rooms), and they all absolutely loved her!!!! Her therapy was a success and now, just like a person, we have to do 5 more chemo treatments plus bloodwork so often to check her white blood cell count and stuff, and hopefully she can still be my great hiking buddy!!!!

So I asked the vets if there were any charities or nonprofits to help me and I got a list. Here’s what I’ve found out. If you can prove a hardship like your choice is save the dog or keep your utilities on, fill out this form, send in the proof, and they will look at it. I can keep my lights on so that doesn’t apply to me. Then there is the other kind where they say they can help but they can’t reimburse anything you’ve paid so far. And that’s where I am stuck. I have pet insurance that paid for most of this. But the aggressiveness of the cancer means get help NOW. The oncologists say pay up front. The hotel says pay now. So everything is put on the credit card because when your dog is that sick and time is of the essence you don’t have the ability to look up charities and apply and wait for their approval. You have to act quick. All of Gertie’s future bills, bloodwork weekly, chemo every 3 weeks, her medications, that can be all budgeted in, but the big chunk that you have to pay NOW, that’s what I’m asking help on.

Hopefully there’s people out there who can help, and if you can’t help, or even if you just don’t want to, at least now you’ve read this story and you now know there are veterinary oncologists out there and they are GREAT!!!!!