Help Lupin Get Back On His Feet

Our names are Fiona and Beau Crosby, and we are parents to a beautiful, intelligent, sweet, 1.5 year old Pyrenees named Lupin. Our baby boy is so loving, he will lay and whine at us until we come and give him snuggles every morning like clockwork. He sleeps under our bed every night. He follows us like a white shadow, always ready to protect us from every bird and branch and leaf and anything else in the world. He is utterly devoted, and not happy unless he’s within reach, and we have loved him more than anything since we met him.

A week ago we accidentally put his life in jeopardy in a way that has left us absolutely shattered, and him in need of extensive and expensive medical care. 

Beau and I attached Lupin’s lead to a truck we rarely use after going on a long walk.

A while later, Beau left to go to the store. His mistake was forgetting Lupin was attached to that truck. Mine was knowing exactly where he was attached, and assuming Beau had seen him and moved his lead. I should have brought him inside as soon as I heard Beau start the truck.

When Beau got back, we both made more mistakes. He assumed I’d brought Lupin in while he was at the store, and Lu wasn’t around because he was asleep under our bed. I assumed Beau had just changed where the lead was attached, and Lupin was still asleep outside after our long walk.

Almost an hour after he got back, Beau went outside and noticed Lupin’s lead. Still attached to the truck, still attached to Lupin’s collar, but with no Lupin. And our world stopped. Through some small provenance, as Beau was realizing this, he got a call from a long time friend who had seen Lupin come out of his collar behind the truck about a quarter mile from our house.

We formed a search party right away and combed the area Lupin was last seen. That first night we were out searching until after 1am. Over the next 48 hours we and dozens of others searched the whole neighbourhood and beyond, hunting along creek beds, in yards, up and down the section of the Iditarod trail that runs through the area. We used drones. We printed over 400 missing posters and plastered them everywhere we could think of. Our Facebook posts were shared hundreds of times. Our entire community of Seward, Alaska was involved and invested and we can never thank them enough.

Around 9 PM on the evening of October 28th, someone called Beau and said Lupin was in his woodshed trying to bed down for the night. He had been missing for a little over 48 hours. We and a few others were out searching for him only a couple streets away and were at his house in minutes. We bundled Lupin up and raced as fast as we could, up the icy Seward Highway to the 24-hour Emergency Vet in Anchorage. Fortunately, we had heavily plastered that area with posters, and the person knew exactly who to call when he saw our big, wounded baby boy.

It is now November 6th and Lupin is in somewhat stable condition. We switched to a clinic in Wasilla yesterday, where he is receiving much more personalized care. His hind legs have been stitched closed, as has a large wound on his chest; the main focus now is maintaining the sutures and, most of all, healing his poor front legs. It will be a long time before they are ready for surgery, and time will tell if that surgery will be for skin grafts or rebuilding his tendons/ligaments or both. We also don’t know at this point if it will need to be multiple surgeries or not, or even what the timeline of that will be.

Just the first week of hospital care has cost us over $11,000. We are not complaining, we are just forever grateful we get to share more moments with Lupin. There is no question in our minds that Lupin will continue to receive the best care we can get him. We are looking into selling anything we can spare, holding fundraisers in our community, finding pet insurance and anything else we can do. However, many of these things are difficult while we are living hours away from home, as there is no veterinary care in Seward currently. We expect this whole process to cost at least $20,000 by the time it’s said and done, and we have to do everything we can to get our healthy baby boy back.

Part of doing everything we can is starting this GoFundMe to help cover some of the medical costs associated with Lupin’s recovery. Even though the guilt weighs heavy in our hearts. Even though our community has already done so much to help find Lupin.

We want to thank you for taking the time to read this, and for contributing whatever you can spare. Regardless of whether that’s just a second of your time for a kind thought or message or something monetary, we are forever thankful to you for joining the community who care so much for our baby Lupin.