One fateful summer night in Madison, Wisconsin some friends and I were walking home after a night out when we decided to stop at a fried desserts truck. While we were in line I saw the most beautiful little pittie I had ever seen. She was shaking, her head laid low, and she was so underweight you could see her ribs trembling under her white coat. I walked up to the people she was with and asked if I could pet her. I slowly got down on her level and sat next to her. She was shy and avoided eye contact but once she realized I was safe she approached me, rested her head on my shoulder, and let out a big sigh. My heart melted. Her owners fell on hard times and couldn’t care for her anymore. They had exhausted all their options and were going to bring her to a high-kill shelter in the morning (a place where pitbull type dogs are typically the first to go).

Well, I never got my fried oreos that night but what I did bring home was much sweeter - a scrawny and scrappy pup everyone would soon know as Lonnie (formerly "Princess") (and currently still a princess).

Cut to now, after road tripping with my 4-legged gal from Wisconsin to New York and New York to Los Angeles - Lonnie is an overall healthy, spritely dog (and I am a very neurotic dog mom that rushes to the vet for anything) so when I saw a few lumps forming on her body a little over a month ago I got her checked out. We discovered she had a mast cell tumor on her leg and shortly after she had 3 masses surgically removed. The mast cell tumor was very low-grade (Yay! Caught it and cut it off early!) and the other two were harmless skin tags (but yikes, not a harmless price tag).

A few days after her surgery, Lonnie was recovering well until she suddenly started seizing. Totally out of the blue with absolutely no signs of distress beforehand.

After being in and out of the emergency vet for two weeks, with the seizures becoming worse and more frequent, we found out she has a brain tumor and brain inflammation. Thankfully, the neurologist and oncologists I've spoken with believe it to be a benign meningioma, a mass that responds very well to radiation therapy. The purpose of radiation therapy is to shrink the tumor as much as possible to extend life expectancy and live it out pain-free.

Lonnie is currently happy and stable on a cocktail of anti-inflammatory steroids, anti-seizure, and anti-convulsion meds but that doesn’t handle the actual problem, the tumor. On medicinal and holistic care alone Lonnie has a few months to live.

This is where I ask for your help (beg and plead actually). I have spent over $12,000 the past month on numerous ER visits, MRI’s, CT scans, and consultations with neurologists and radiation oncologists for Lonnie’s care. The radiation clinic will need to do a CT simulation to accurately determine the dose of radiation and pinpoint exactly where to administer the radiation for the best possible results. I have been quoted approximately $4,000 - $5,000 for that alone.

There are a few tiers of treatment that we could choose:

If you know me, then you know Lonnie. She’s my best friend and frankly the love of my life (sappy but it’s true). I’m struggling to come to terms with the possibility of not being able to pay for the care she deserves. Frankly, due to the amount I have already spent, I won’t be able to afford any form of treatment at this time.

I know $20k is a big, unrealistic number, but I’m hoping to raise a good amount of what I have spent to be in a better position to at least pay for our last choice, Palliative Radiation. If we can raise closer to the $20k mark then I could confidently move forward with one of the better treatment options, and pay the rest off myself.

I can’t put into words how much I appreciate your support, donations, and shares. I know there are a lot of people out there who love Lonnie and we’d love to have more time making memories with all of you.

Now, here are some pics with pals over the years :)