Ralphs Surgery

Ralph is an amazing 9 year old Labradoodle. He is a working demonstration dog at his owners dog training school and also Darwin’s first working Therapy Dog. Ralph has brought so much joy and love to many people in Darwin’s small community and now he needs your help. Ralph has had a horrible start to 2018, first being diagnosed with a cystic meningioma (brain tumour) in January. At the end of Jan he braved surgery to remove the cyst and tumour, which was performed by the absolutely amazing Dr Sam Long from CARE Vet Specialists in Melbourne. He returned to Darwin 2 weeks later and was recovering well. At the end of Feb Ralph got sick suddenly. It was touch and go for quite some time but he never gave up and has showed how amazingly strong is over the last 3 weeks. His fight to keep going has been nothing but amazing. We’ve asked for a miracle a few times and have been rewarded but then he would go downhill again. Late last week he was taken to Katherine to have a CT scan as this was our only hope of finding out what was wrong with him. Unfortunately he has pneumocephalus which means air is leaking from the surgery site and he needs to go through another operation. Ideally the operation would be performed in Melbourne but because of the issue he is unable to fly again so we asked for the surgeon to come to Darwin and he has agreed!!! Surgery will be next week and hopefully everything goes well and Ralph will continue recovering well as he was prior to this hurdle. We do have pet insurance but there’s only a certain limit we can claim and from his first surgery and the vet care throughout this we have come to the end of our yearly claim limit. If anyone is willing to help us get the surgeon to Darwin and contribute to his surgery I will forever be grateful. At the moment I have no idea how much the surgery, flights, accomodation will cost. From last experience it wasn’t cheap at all. If you could spare just a little to help get Ralph better I’d really appreciate it. Thank you.