I adopted Kiwi from the local humane society in 2016. She was found in a ditch with other dogs and brought to Clewiston domestic animal services. The dogs were then transferred to the humane society. I went to go see her and saw on her description that she was heartworm positive. I can still remember the first time I saw her, she was laying on top of other dogs and she picked her head up and her ears stood straight up. She got up and hopped over to me and that’s when I noticed she had deformed back legs.

My heart couldn't leave her there and I applied to adopt her.

Once adopted she continued her heartworm treatment and got through that with no issues. I consulted multiple vets about her hind limb deformity and was told she was born that way and advised not to do anything surgically as it would only make matters worse.

Despite her rough start in life she remained a healthy and active dog. She loved to run and play. The only thing different about her was that she didn’t walk the same as other dogs and she couldn’t jump up on things, but she surprisingly hopped up a step once or twice!

She has always been the happiest little dog and loves both humans and other dogs so much.

We feel grateful that we have been able to give her such a full life for the past 9 years.

Around the beginning of middle of June we noticed her nose was swollen one evening and that she had discharge coming out of her nose with tinges of blood. We took her to the ER vet who ran bloodwork and did a physical exam, not much showed up besides her white blood cell count being a little high. The ER vet suspected a possible dental abscess and we were told to follow up with our regular vet for X-rays and possible dental to treat any infection.

So we scheduled an appointment with our regular vet, my vet did not see anything alarming in her mouth and X-rays did not provide any answers. Antibiotics were not helping either.

The symptoms continued and got slightly worse.

I quickly made an appointment with a specialist who did a CT scan where they found a soft tissue mass in her nose and very swollen lymph node so they took a biopsy and aspirate of her lymph node.

The specialty vet suspected cancer but we had to wait for confirmation from cytology which did indeed come back positive for cancer cells. We are currently awaiting biopsy results to let us know what type of cancer it is.

Luckily the CT results showed that the cancer hasn’t spread.

Unfortunately this has been a very costly diagnosis. The oncologist informed us that she is a good candidate for radiology treatments but it’s just not feasible financially for us as the estimate is over $10,000.

We know this cancer is an aggressive cancer and has grown very quickly, we were informed that with no treatment we will have a very limited time with her and the symptoms will continue to get worse and she would be very uncomfortable due to the mass growing and bleeding, possibly putting pressure on her eye or brain.

We have a palliative care option to keep her comfortable and minimize symptoms but it is still costly at an estimate of over $5,000.

I believe she deserves this comfort which is why I am asking for any help or support. Even just sharing this would mean the world to us.

Thank you!

Will add more information as we receive it.