Coda is a nearly four year old Anatolian Shepherd Dog—a large working breed of livestock guardian dogs. He's barely an adult for his breed, but for a breed that's already full of big dogs, he's exceptionally large. At six months of age he was already as large as an Anatolian normally gets when fully grown. Now, he's multiple inches taller, and about twenty pounds heavier.

He also struggles to walk now, when he easily has another six years or more of life left in him.

Not long ago, he started having difficulty sitting down; legs shaking when he tried, struggling to put his weight down. Struggling to squat when he has to go outside. Before long, he began to show difficulty moving around in general, and couldn't run like he used to. Needless to say, my family was worried, especially given the possibilities of what the problem could be. However, he is my mother and stepfather's dog, and both of them are retired and on severely limited disability income. I help as much as I can, but as a federal employee who is currently not allowed to work and not being paid, there's nothing I can do to put money away to get him the help that he needs.

When we took him to the vet, they had to sedate and x-ray him, and that was when we learned that he had a torn ligament in his right knee, alongside some early arthritis in both. Given how large he was at such a young age, and how he was still growing, he essentially outgrew himself, and it was his leg that paid the price. If the torn ligament isn't taken care of, eventually the damage will get bad enough that he'll have a completely lame leg, not to mention whatever further issues can spread from him being unable to properly support his weight. Between his surgery and the recovery after, including regular check-ups to make sure that his other leg doesn't risk the same injury (which is, unfortunately, very likely), the bill is up to $4,500, money that none of us have.

He's too large to afford to have a bum leg, and he's too young to end up crippled when there's such a chance to help him. Anything that you can give to make sure he can keep walking and have the quality of life he should would make us incredibly grateful.