Get Gabi Better!!!

Hi, my name is Yolanda and I am a mid 30s mama in British Columbia. We have a wonderful little family with two young boys under three years old, and our four year old beautiful Bernese Mountain dog, Gabi. I can promise you - you’ve never met a sweeter, more energetic, friendlier Bernese mountain dog in your life than our gorgeous girl Gabi!

She is our first baby, and our world. Two months ago, she became extremely lethargic, limping, had a major loss of appetite, and has dropped 13 lbs now, (Shes skin and bones). We have been to the vet multiple times now and received antibiotics and anti-inflammatories for what the veterinarian thought was a sore foot and slightly inflamed (private parts). However, after Xrays, bloodwork, and a week of those medications, nothing changed and her appetite went gone even further downhill. We went back, to a new Vet at the Emergency Clinic for a second opinion. She'd lost even more weight, walked like senior ( Shes only 4), and could barely get up and off the couch. More Xrays, bloodwork, a urine analysis, oral exam, etc later, and they were still clueless as to what was causing her symptoms. They sent us home with anti nausea, antibiotics and a light steroid to try and get her appetite back and weight back up for now. She ate, but still lost another 3 lbs last week.

The next step was a $2400 CT scan. ( We finally got that done only because of this go fund me could we afford it) They told us 48 hours for results, 3 day later I still hadn't heard so I called to inquire. They had the results on file but could not go through them with me until 'my vet' who was familiar with the case was in again 3 days later..... I got a bit short with them and finally they agreed to email me the results. The next day, the Vet who did the CT scan called me to go over their findings. Basically they were mainly concerned about some swollen lymph nodes and lesions on her spleen. The next step is to take samples of those lymph nodes and another blood test and urine culture… No results from those tests. Back to square one.

last week she ran out of prednisone and was starting to go downhill again pretty quickly, I thought I’d give it one last shot at a third Vet that I had heard great things about. We took her in on Wednesday, this vet felt her over head to toe, took her sweet time with her and honestly it felt like she really cared. We went home with some anti-nausea pills, as they sent off a fancy Uralysis to Langley. I just found out her proteins are 20 times the normal amount in her urine.

Not good. But at least it’s a step in the direction of finding the cause.

Our vet is concerned about a bad kidney infection or UTI that spread to her kidneys or even possibly cancer, we are still waiting on the rest of the results from the fancy Uralysis.

But trying to get her in for a x-ray today

because this vet felt a little lump in the pelvic area Monday.

So far we are about $6500 into this, that we did not have, but thanks to so many friends and family, and even strangers - we’ve slowly been able to chip away at that debt. At the moment we don’t have many other avenues to pull money from, so if anyone else has a little bit of love left in their wallet, we would be forever grateful.

Normally we would have no trouble affording some of these surprise costs.. However, with the bank of Canada increasing rates, our mortgage for our home has doubled since last September and we are penny pinching every cent. I’m hoping to find a few wonderful human beings who are lucky to have a little extra funding in their wallets at the moment to help us ensure our baby girl gets the medication and treatment she needs. I promise to pay it forward and any extra penny we do not need for our girl will be donated to either our local SPCA or to another family that needs help paying for their pets’ treatment.

If you can spare a few dollars, we will be forever grateful and promise to pay it forward when we have some extra money in our wallets!!

Sincerely and with love,

The Stewart family