Help us pay for Sprout’s liver surgery

Hi, we’re Jordan and Cameron and we live in Birmingham, Alabama. In late July, we picked out a beautiful puppy named Sprout and brought him home to meet our other dog, Charlie. Within two weeks, we noticed that he seemed very tired and weak—not what you’d expect out of a growing healthy boy. We took him to the vet and he had a perfectly fine checkup with the exception of two parasites (not totally uncommon in puppies from kennels) and he started antibiotics.

Sprout should have started improving on those antibiotics within a week, but 3 weeks went by and he seemed even worse. All of this culminated on September 6th when he started having minor seizures and went blind. We took him to an emergency vet and they correctly diagnosed him with a liver shunt.

Liver shunts are caused by veins keeping blood out of the liver, which keeps his liver from processing and filtering the toxins inside the blood. Basically, he was slowly filling up with poison because his body was full of toxins that couldn’t be filtered and then emptied. The lifespan for puppies with liver shunts like this is less than 4 years.

Thankfully, the ER vets were able to drain his body of a lot of those toxins and his vision returned and his seizing stopped, and our regular vet confirmed that this was the correct diagnosis. We then took Sprout to Mississippi State University where he received a CT scan and we were given a daily medicine regimen for maintenance until he is old enough for surgery. In the meantime, he has had to be placed on a very special (costly) diet of hydralized protein so that he can process the food without increasing his toxin levels.

Sprout’s liver shunt surgery will be performed at the University of Tennessee by a surgeon who basically pioneered this technique of placing a coil inside the vein that is keeping the blood out of his liver. Over time, that coil will expand and then his blood will be able to pass through the liver as designed. After surgery, Sprout’s prognosis will be that of a healthy normal dog’s life.

This is an amazing surgery, but obviously an expensive one, too. His estimated surgery cost is $10,000. Thankfully, we have pet insurance for Sprout but we will still have to pay for 20% out of pocket, in addition to travel expenses for the 5 days we have to spend in Knoxville, and over $1,000 we have already paid out of pocket that isn’t reimbursed by his insurance.

We have constantly asked ourselves “why is it our luck to pick out this puppy with all these issues?” and then we look at him and realize all the love and joy he’s already brought into our life these last six months, and we’re filled with the infinite amount of joy that comes from picturing him living a long and healthy life. We know deep down that most likely, another family adopting this puppy might not would have been able to go through with this surgery, so we believe that Sprout was placed in our lives in order for us to help him.