Help save little Lucy's life

This has been written by Natalia George, Head of Animal Welfare at Flori's Friends Rescue.

Tiny little Lucy came into our care very recently after her owner could no longer look after her. Upon entry we very quickly realised this poor girl was in a complete state. She been left to suffer with a UTI for over a year which in turn created some of the biggest bladder stones I personally have ever seen in my career. Poor Lucy must have been in excruciating pain. After paying for her £1200 emergency bladder surgery and getting her relatively back to normal we very quickly realised Lucy's mobility wasn't right either.

Lucy was sent in for x-rays on all of her legs (£800) and me and my team were absolutely devastated to find out Lucy needs £15,000 of surgery to save her life. At what point do you decide that a price it too high and then look little Lucy in the eyes and decide against surgery and allow her to be euthanised instead? I stood next to her today while she licked my leg to greet me and felt like crying. Why do their lives depend so much on money? Why is love alone not enough to fix the neglect they have suffered? I understand this is a large amount of money but I would urge you to please put yourself in my position where each day I complete one neglect case and another five pop up. Could you look each animal in the eye and decide that they're just too much of an expense to "fix", that sadly they just aren't quite worth it and would have to lose their life. This job is highly depressing and soul destroying many days of the week but what keeps me and my colleagues going is the hope that the general public will be kind enough some months to allow us to continue saving lives. I can personally say there are tears in every one of my evenings for each and every single animals in our care.

If you still can't put yourself in our position and don't wish to donate I thank you for reading this far but if you can then please let me explain the surgeries she requires to make a FULL recovery to then enable her to go to a forever home and enjoy the rest of her life like every dog should.

Lucy has short ulna syndrome which requires highly specialist surgery to straighten out her front leg and stop it from total collapse. This syndrome has also caused her to put more weight into her back legs which in turn has now given her not one but two luxating patellas. If we don't correct the patellas her cruciate ligaments will tear and Lucy will require immediately euthanasia, so time is of the essence. If we raise the funding we need we will begin with the luxating patella's which will take around 8-10 weeks to recover from and then we can go for the corrective ulna surgery. If all goes to plan and Lucy recovers well she can live a very long and happy life. If we do not do the corrective surgeries Lucy would need to be euthanised as her front leg would collapse and her cruciate ligaments would tear (these two things together would be agonising). Lucy is only 3 years old and has her whole entire life ahead of her. She is a shining star with such a zest for life, it would be criminal to choose euthanasia.

I really hope there are some kind people out there to help us with this case. We are a specialist mobility charity so can recover Lucy very well its just such a huge shame everything is money reliant. Thank you all for reading this and if we reach our first target of £6000 we will start the first surgery and pop updates on here and hopefully then reach enough to do the next.

Much love from all of us at team flori including little Lucy x