Help Jonah Get Bladder Stone Surgery

Shanna Legg is organizing this fundraiser.

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This is Jonah. He's a roughly 8-year-old Beagle/Jack Russell mix who lives in the northern panhandle of West Virginia with me and my elderly mother. He enjoys burying his face into blankets, sniffing around the yard, and wooing at whatever catches his interest. (Anything!)

Jonah's had a really tough year. In late January, we woke up one Sunday morning to find he'd suddenly went blind overnight. After a stressful urgent care visit, he was diagnosed with glaucoma - not a big deal, except one of his eyes wasn't responding to treatment. We were able to receive assistance then to get the problem eye removed, and he's been doing great since then despite all the anxiety and stress he caused us. Which he's perfectly oblivious to, as a dog.

But at the beginning of June we had another scare with him - a urinary blockage. We rushed him to our vet (thankfully it was during normal business hours) and while he managed to pass it at the vet, it confirmed a diagnosis of bladder stones. We put him on a prescription diet and hoped for the best while we awaited lab results on what kind of stones he had. We just recently got those results - struvite stones, which should be able to be managed by diet but can form as a result of UTIs, which means we need to be vigilant.

We thought we were out of the woods, until this past Sunday on June 22nd he needed to be rushed to urgent care for another blockage. The vet there was able to flush the stone back into his bladder, but it's become clear that we're dealing with a bit of a minefield. Our vet says it could take anywhere from two to three months for his existing stones to dissolve with his diet, and he's already had two near misses in the past month. At this point, the next step is surgery to remove the stones from his bladder.

That's why I'm coming to all of you. My family has been in and out of the vet with both our dogs multiple times this year - we unfortunately lost our other senior dog on June 16th to Cushing's Disease. We aren't ready to lose Jonah too when a surgery could prevent this. Our vet is thankfully willing to work with us on a payment plan, but we need to put a minimum down to schedule his surgery.