Ellen Ripley Starkweather (Ripley) is a precious, goofy, loving 3-year-old St. Bernard. She’s been through a lot in her little life. She came into our lives after being rescued from an abusive, neglectful situation. She was painfully underweight. She had skin infections. She had been tied up and ignored her whole first year of life. And yet, somehow, she is the sweetest, most trusting soul we have ever known.

Ripley loves me, and I adore her, but she is unquestionably Steven’s soul dog. She RAN to him when we met her, and she has been running to him, kissing him, sitting on him, and following his every step ever since. Her favorite thing to do is to run up behind us, cram her head and her entire big body in between our legs, and look up at us like, “heh, isn’t this the most fun!?!” When we try to walk, she walks, too. Like horseback, but completely silly.

Ripley developed a hot spot last weekend. We took her to the vet, they prescribed steroids, and we went home. Fast forward to Tuesday. She stopped eating, she was drinking bowl after bowl of water, but not going to the bathroom. Very quickly, she deteriorated. She couldn’t stand. She couldn’t even wake up. We rushed her to the emergency room, where they determined she was very sick with Addison’s disease. She was admitted to the hospital, where she remains in critical care.

This disease, this crisis, came out of nowhere. Ripley is young and otherwise healthy, with a long life ahead of her filled with love and fun. We want to get her through this critical crisis phase and onto longterm medication maintenance, but this kind of specialized care is extremely expensive. Two days of hospitalization, with likely many more to go, have us in the $18,000 range. She deserves a chance to fight this thing and heal. Steven deserves to make many more memories with his soul dog.

Any help, whether you are moved to donate to Ripley’s care, or share our GoFundMe via social media, is so deeply, humbly appreciated.

Thank you for reading. Ripley can’t talk, but if she could, she would say:

”I love you, and snacks, and friends, and I am Ripley and thank you.”

❤️✨