Hello! My name is Sonnie, and I am raising money to help pay off the debt accrued from my dog’s unexpected life-saving surgery this past weekend.

Friday, Curie started vomiting and it lasted all day. She was also not eating. She and I both did not sleep that night, and it was rough for her. I couldn’t tell if it was something serious (she’s gotten bad tummy aches before), but when she refused food aggressively Saturday morning, I started calling vets to see who was open. No one could take her, so we had to go to the animal ER. We were there for a few hours, and she was seemingly better, though I was not able to afford the diagnostic testing needed to see if there were any large issues. So, we went with an anti-nausea treatment and some electrolytes and went home. Ten hours went by, and she was still refusing food, so we went back to the vet around 10 pm.

She began to quickly get worse and worse, and the more tests we did, they believed she had a uterine infection, which is often fatal. (Curie had not been fixed prior due to having multiple vets tell me that the risk of her undergoing anesthesia and surgery at her weight outweighed the potential risks of remaining unspayed.)

In addition to the assumed pyometra, they believed she was septic and were struggling to keep her blood sugar at a constant rate. Her BG (blood sugar/blood glucose) was dangerously low, and she was unable to maintain it on her own without constant supplementation via IV. We continued her care at this vet for about 8 hours total.

We were told she would have to be rushed into surgery but would have to go to a different facility because they felt another specialist would be a better fit for her condition, and that they may be able to better accommodate my financial situation. They told us at that point that there was only a 50% survival rate after surgery as it seemed very progressed. The drive was the scariest 15 minutes of my life, as we weren’t assured that she was truly stable enough to survive the ride to the vet. We got there successfully and waited 5 hours while she became stable and another surgeon prepped her. Thankfully, this vet let us know that everything looked a lot better than expected and that it appeared to be a large blockage in her small intestines and would require surgery, possibly removal of some parts of her intestines as well since she could have dead tissue. They were very confident in the procedure. She was pushed back multiple times due to more critical cases and them being able to maintain her stability (this is a good thing!!), so it wasn’t until 2:30 pm that she went under. Surgery was successful, and by 6:30, she was waking up from surgery, and we were told she was very perky and lively! They let us know that no sepsis was present and that it was a very simple and fast procedure. (They also removed her uterus just to make sure that pyrometra could not happen in the future.) As of Monday, we are now just waiting for her to begin eating on her own so she can be discharged. After spending what feels all weekend sobbing on vet emergency floors with no sleep and praying to whomever would listen, I am extremely relieved that my baby will be coming home soon.

Though I am beyond grateful that my best friend is okay and recovering well, I am now left with the massive financial burden due to her multiple diagnostic tests, surgery, and costs of her stay at the hospital.

This was something I was extremely unprepared to handle. I am a full-time adult student who returned back to school after being laid off unexpectedly in June of 2025. I have no steady income currently as I focus on school full-time and merely have a few face-painting gigs to hardly maintain my living expenses. Otherwise, I am fully living off of student loans, which are at risk of being fully depleted as I have also used about 50% of it to pay for Curie’s initial veterinary care.

Curie has been my best friend for the past 7 years. I have raised her from the day she was born, and we have truly grown up together. I was 19 when she was born. She bounced with me from apartment to apartment as I navigated my early 20s, been there to lap up my tears after heartbreaks, and we have only ever been apart for about a week at a time since then. She is my everything, so not doing this operation and choosing euthanasia was truly not an option for me. I can’t imagine life without her, and am so grateful I don’t have to right now.

Anything, truly anything, helps. I am prepared to return to work early while I finish my degree, but would like to pay off my debts as soon as possible to avoid the high interest rates of the secondary loan I had to take out alongside the use of my student loan funds.

price breakdown;

goal: $9,500-

Vet #1: $1,518 (radiographs, blood panels, ultrasounds, electrolyte and BG treatments)

Vet #2: $8000 (surgery, additional radiographs, hospital stay, etc.)