Hi, my name is Lisa and I am doing something that I would never ever do along with my husband Brad and that is ask for some help to fund our devastating fight for our 14 week old beautiful Labrador puppy Ronnie who has suspected bone cancer. As you can imagine, our life has been turned upside down with fear, utter sadness and shattered our broken hearts. We just can’t believe that we are faced with this whilst caring for a puppy so young. We aren’t fortunate to have children and so our pets are treated like our family.

To make things worse, after lots of phone calls and pleas for help, the insurance company won’t cover the vet costs and we are facing this alone.

We aren’t prepared to give up hope on our boy without knowing what we are faced with. He deserves answers and a chance.

Here is his story so far… sorry if I go on!!

After a dreamy first few weeks bonding with our perfect boy, we excitedly took our Ronnie to the vets for his second vaccination at 12 weeks. After lots of kisses from the vet and nurses and one happy puppy later, we let our vet know that we had noticed a slight hard swelling on one side of his jaw. Like us, the vet presumed it may have been a tooth abscess due to the endless teething so we left it for a week and just monitored it hoping that it would disappear. He was showing no signs of being in pain, was chewing everything in sight and like any Labrador, was scoffing everything in his way. As the week went by, we still weren't happy with how it looked and so he was put on antibiotics for a week hoping that it would disappear. Sadly it didn’t, it was still there but looking slightly bigger so after discussions with our vets we decided to admit him to the vet hospital for further investigation with X-rays and bloods. We kissed him goodbye and he went off with his tail wagging non the wiser. I was asked to ring back at lunch for an update.

Lunch time came, I quickly picked up the phone and rang through to see how he was hoping that they may have found an abscess.

This was when our hearts broke in half.

We were told that there was something on the X-ray that looked of a concern and I straight away said, is it cancer. They said yes but they hoped to god they could be wrong. How could our gorgeous baby puppy potentially have cancer. A few hours later, we went to collect him and to talk through the X-rays. We all stood there crying, staring at the X-rays in utter disbelief at what we were seeing. Bloods were taken and they show that he is poorly. We don’t know what we are faced with, if it is treatable and what his future looks like. It might not be cancer but we can’t give up on him without knowing.

He needs a CT scan and a biopsy to help us get answers for him and to let us know what we are dealing with. We have been quoted over £2500 just for the scan and biopsy. He is being referred and will be having both. Depending on the results, if they show some hope then he will need treatment. We just can’t and won’t give up on him without trying our utter best.

We are watching a puppy thrive, not fading away in front of our eyes and that’s why we won’t give up any hope in helping him as much as we can. He isn’t in pain that we know of, he is putting on weight and is full of life. He is trying to live, his body is trying to keep on growing.

Thank you, for taking the time to read this, this hasn’t been easy to write but we are just wanting to give Ronnie a chance of some hope. We will update as we go along but please, if nothing else send us nothing but positive thoughts.

Love,

Lisa, Brad, Ronnie and his fur sister Vera xxxx