Hi, our names are Vic and Patty. We live with our 10-year-old Puggle named Ella. We have had her since she was a puppy at 8 weeks old. She has been a fantastic companion for us, and we love her dearly. When we got her, we decided not to get her fixed because we thought it would be best for her to not have to go through any kind of surgery.

What we didn't know is that we were possibly signing her up for a terrible experience: Pyometra. Had we known that such a thing existed, we would have gotten her spay taken care of years ago.

Anyway, to go into what happened. Ella went into her normal heat cycle about 5 weeks ago. But this one lasted a little longer than usual. We didn't think much of it as she is older now (10 years) and just wrote it off as normal. Her cycle ended, and she was perfectly fine—eating, sleeping, playing, etc.

Well, that was until the evening of September 4, 2025. We were at the dining room table talking to our children on the phone when Patty noticed an odd smell and then looked on the floor to see a terrible sight. (I will try not to be too graphic here.)

Ella was experiencing severe leakage from her girl parts. We had no idea what it was, but it smelled terrible and had a metallic odor as well. So we immediately figured that it had something to do with her heat cycle that had just ended.

We immediately called the emergency vet, and they informed us that they considered it an emergency and that she should be seen as soon as possible. So we wrapped her up in a few blankets to try to contain what was happening, and we loaded her in the car and took off for the emergency vet.

When we got there, they checked her vitals, and she was stable, but they recommended surgery to remove her uterus and everything else in there that was causing this problem. Left unattended, it would surely end her life.

So we told them to do whatever was necessary to get her all fixed up.

That is when they hit us with the price. We had no idea an ER vet procedure would be so much money—money we didn't have. Unfortunately, considering the state of everything right now, our credit isn't in the position to be able to be given any kind of funds in a situation like this.

Vic decided to put out a call to our daughter (whom we would find out later was currently in the emergency room herself as she thought she might be having a stroke. Another story for another day, I suppose. She is fine, though!)

Our daughter offered to apply for the credit and was approved, but her wonderful boyfriend stepped in and said that he would put it all on his credit card, as it was much lower interest. He said, get her fixed up, and we can figure it out later.

Well, this is part of the figuring out process. We would never opt to do something like this, but we were told that there are tons of animal lovers out there that like to help each other. So we decided to give it a shot.

Obviously, we have no intention that this GoFundMe will foot the entire bill. But we figure at least anything that can go to it will help us pay back our daughter's boyfriend as quickly as possible, as they are both trying to save up to buy a house for themselves soon. The last thing we want is this large charge on his card to hamper that for them.

In full transparency, the both of us currently live on one income as Vic is unable to work due to numerous health issues that he has been dealing with for years. So this unexpected bill is going to make things very difficult for us. But even without a GoFundMe, we wouldn't have made any other decision. Ella is just too important to us both.

If you have gotten this far, thank you so much for reading all of that. Even if you, or no one donates to this, at least we got a nice picture of Ella out there for everyone to see as we had just got in the car after picking her up and were on our way home!

God Bless You all!

-Vic and Patty