Help Save Our Puppy from Severe Illness

We are a young couple living in Panama City, FL. We got our baby boy 2.5 years ago. His name is Dutch and he is a Golden Retriever. He is still a young pup and has fallen ill with some secondary infection after a tick bite. We are hoping to raise money for the rollercoaster of events we’ve been through to help our boy get better. Even if we only raise $100, anything will help ❤️ Please keep him in your thoughts as we are fighting for him. He has such a fun personality / loves playing and stealing things. We are dreaming of the day we can get back to this.

RARE CASE of Dutch / This all started when he was limping back in May and we went to the vet. A little bit of infection was going on and the doctor said his knee was torn. Misdiagnosed. We went to a different doctor and they said it might be a tick-borne illness that can cause lameness (limping) and sickness of course. That came back positive for Rocky Mountain spotted fever. We thought he was getting better with meds but he took a downward turn on June 29 when his white blood cell count was the highest they have ever seen. 142,000. For example (for a dog) your white blood cell count should be about 15,000 and platelets should be 145,000 and higher. They said to go to Tallahassee immediately. Stayed in Tallahassee and got him on some new meds. He was doing better.

We went back home on July 3 / Platelets haven’t gone up but treatment takes a couple of days from HIVIG infusion that they did. They said it would be okay to take him home. They recommended the HIVIG infusion because he wasn’t improving. You can only do this once and we were holding off on that for that reason and because it’s 3,000. Platelets are responsible for clotting your blood when you get cut so when they are really low like that you can bleed out. Which is the concern.

On July 5 he had a nosebleed…. We rushed to Niceville ER and he stayed the night. White blood cell count was 178,000 and platelets went down to 12.7 which is critically low.

Controlled the bleed and gave him a platelet infusion and a whole blood transfer. This cost 4,000. We drove back to Tallahassee on July 6.

July 7-12 / White blood cell count has gone down. 80,000-90,000 and has stayed about this number all week. Platelets have been about 50,000. These numbers are way better but still not where you want them to be.

There is some other underlying infection.

Did a biopsy on the lymph node, spleen, and liver. His lymph node was enlarged around June 29 which came back negative, that isn’t enlarged anymore. Spleen and liver came back negative on July 10.

Tested for Hepatozoon infections which are the worst ones from a tick. H. Canis is treatable and H. Americanum is not curable. We were waiting on these results for a week. We were so worried about the Americanum. On July 12, we received the news that they were negative. Doctors were anticipating that’s what it would be considering there is some other infection going on. They also tested for all other tick borne illnesses and even the Rocky Mountain spotted fever came back negative. Since that all came back negative they are now doing a bone marrow biopsy which was the last result and hoping they do not find cancer or some other infection. Hoping that it’s treatable if so…

It’s been a long scary 3 weeks..

He has been in the hospital for almost 4 weeks (July 21) and as I’m sure you know.. vet bills are insanely expensive. We are asking for some donations to help with these costs.

July 14 / They are doing the bone marrow biopsy . They did a whole blood transfer again on July 12 to help. Praying we get results in a week and that it’s something treatable. Please keep him in your thoughts & prayers ❤️

July 17 / Bone marrow biopsy came back basically inconclusive. There isn’t even a test to confirm it but the doctors THINK it’s chronic myeloid based leukemia which is a very rare type of cancer. Genetic sequencing of neutrophils will give us more answers to really say they believe it’s this rare type of cancer but there is no test to confirm that’s what it is. We still hope that the neutrophils don’t point to that. Holding on to that hope that it’s possibly not even that…

They are going to discuss this with other universities in the U.S. to see what the best game plan is whether that’s chemo or not. If we do the chemo route we are hoping it keeps it at bay so we can have him as long as we can ❤️ It is possible we could have him for a few more years.

Capital Veterinary Specialists in Tallahassee are taking care of him.