Support Arlo's Journey to Pain-Free Life

So the past month for our little family has been crazy. We’ve taken Arlo to the emergency vet about 3 times in the span of 3 weeks. It all started one evening when I got home and let him out of his crate, and noticed his back was super arched and he wasn’t wanting to walk. So as I’m freaking out with what to do, we decide to take him to the EV. When we get there we check in, they take Arlo back to examine him, while we wait. They eventually come out to basically tell us that one of Arlos discs has shifted and he will need to be on crate rest for 4 weeks with all this medication. Arlo is a full breed Dachshund, and if you know anything about Dachshunds you know that it is common for them to develop IVDD( Intervertebral Disc Disease) because their spines are so long. Well anyways listening to the Doctors orders of crate rest and medicine, we continue to do that for about 2 weeks, then we end up having to take him back because once again he was not wanting to walk and was in pain. The Doctor basically said that “Arlo is walking around so we don’t think this is a severe case but if you want to do a CT you can or we can prescribe you more pain pills/muscle relaxers.” Austin and I not knowing what to do because we aren’t really understanding the severity of his injury we go with more medication and more crate rest. Then only 2 days later I take him back again, because he was in so much pain he was unable to sit still and he was panting, just not acting like he has been. Once again they don’t give me a clear answer on what I should really do here, and I asked them multiple times “in your opinion, since you are a professional and know more about all this, do you think we should do more than what we’ve been doing?” Not a clear answer from them, and at this point we were trying to avoid having to get surgery considering it ranges from $7000-$9000, it wasn’t that I wouldn’t pay for the surgery but that I didn’t want to if I didn’t have to. I would rather die than give my dog up to someone else or watch him suffer more than he’s had too. Well anyways they prescribe us more pills this time it’s codeine, a narcotic. We hadn’t had to use the codeine since we got it, until the other night when we noticed that Arlo was in a lot of pain again. At this point Austin and I decided that we need to do something else because none of this was working. So we decided to go see a neurologist specialist, someone who will know more about Arlos breed. After seeing the specialist he basically said that we can either keep masking Arlos pain with medication for as long as we want, in hopes that he’ll get better, or we can get a CT and do surgery, and know that his pain will be gone after surgery. I of course tell him we’re here to do the surgery because watching my dog be in so much pain that he urinates on himself and violently shakes because he can’t get comfortable is so hard to watch, even though Arlo is still able to walk and he isn’t at the “down” point yet, where he’s dragging his back legs, we still think surgery is the best option. The doctor agreed and was very compassionate and understanding about everything. He even gave me the rundown of how the surgery works, how the discs in their bodies work and what the aftercare of surgery looks like. At this point Austin and I are able to breathe knowing that surgery is going to help his pain, we don’t even care that it’s an outrageous amount of money we just want our dog to not be in pain and go back to his normal self. If you know Arlo you know that he is such a lover boy. He is the sweetest dog I have ever known, and we are so lucky to have him, he is our literal baby. Arlo is 3 years old and has so much life left to live.

As all of this has thrown a stop to mine and Austin’s life, which is understandable, we decided to make a GoFundMe. We don’t expect much but anything will help us. We do appreciate every penny that we might get and so will Arlo. We have scheduled Arlo to have his CT and surgery on September 19th, and they will keep him over night to observe him.