Please Help Me Help Brutus Fight for His Life!!

Hello everyone, I’m Nessie, Brutus’ hooman mom. Thank you for taking the time to read our story and for everyone’s continued thoughts and prayers. Brutus is a very special boy as he is my disabled veterans PTSD service dog as well as my fur baby and much more I have had the honor of being Bru’s mom since about 3 & 1/2 weeks old. I had bottle-feed my little fighter until he no longer needed nursing as his dog momma quit nursing/was unable to nurse too early. He is my everything, and I can’t imagine losing him before he gets to live a long, full, happy life. He is only almost 7!!

I came home Monday evening after going out of town to my parents for a couple of days and Brutus was not doing well at all. I took him to the emergency vet. He was having a hard time breathing and he had a fever of 104.7*, his heart rate was 170 with an elevated white blood cell count. He was on deaths door. We went home with subcutaneous fluids, a broad-spectrum antibiotic, and some pain meds. It was a very long, very scary and emotional night.

I called our primary care veterinarian first thing Tuesday morning and he spent the day with her and got the work-ups done, labs, urine, imaging… I got the dreaded call from our vet to let me know he’s got fluid in and around his lungs and they didn’t know what was causing it to happen. At first, he wasn’t responding to the broad-spectrum antibiotics, and while with his primary vet after the new findings, she gave him antibiotics for respiratory infections/pneumonia, as his WBC has almost doubled from the time we were at the emergency to when she saw him Tuesday. We were hopeful it was something we could fight with antibiotics as long as it wasn’t too late.

We started the strong antibiotics along with the antibiotics from the emergency vet and Brutus is making baby steps. Brutus’ vet told us that if he starts responding that it will be a long month or two of fighting the crud and hopefully continually getting better. With many prayers, thoughts, good vibes, and healing energies that have been sent our way we got our miracle and Brutus is a fighter he has gotten some energy back to get up and move around, he has started coughing and getting the ick out slowly, we are still working on his appetite (not quite normal yet) after many trips back and forth to the vet we are exhausted yet beyond words happy he is still with us and fighting!!

As most of you may know, the vet can be expensive. Brutus is worth every last penny in the world to me and I have exhausted my means getting us to this point. If there is any way you are able to help, your generosity and donation will be going to help cover the cost of Brutus’ upcoming follow-up appointments and his medications which are almost $100/week. Please help us if you can to get Brutus to his 7th birthday and beyond. Thank you from Brutus and his hooman family