Please Help Save Lucy!

Here are more photos of Lucy

This is Lucy. She is a almost 2 years old. All her life she has been sick. We have made improvements to keep her alive so far, but we don't have the money to finish the job and lately her stool has turned bloody- we fear she wont make it another few months for us to be able to afford the bills, let alone another few days. Keep reading to get the full story.

Lucy is a 1 and 3/4th year old Boston terrier. As you will notice from her size, she looks more like 3-4 months old. Our 6-month-old house female cat towers her. Our other dog, max, which she is supposed to match in size, swallows her.

When we first picked up Lucy from our breeder, things were fine. She was at a healthy weight, however she was smaller for her age. It was clear she was the runt of her litter. I was ignorant to how small was "too small" and didn't realize this until later. It only took a week with her under our roof for things to turn for the worse.

Vomiting. Non-stop. On the floor, in the bed, on me: She couldn't keep anything down. We took her to our vet who couldn't find anything wrong with her. We called our breeder and took her to his recommended vet, who also shooed us away. The breeder told us "puppies just puke," and essentially told us to stop calling him. The vets didn't know what to do.

Over the next 6 months Lucy lived like this and no one could tell us a thing. I got into the habit of waking up every weeknight to change the sheets and throw them in the washer because she would throw up. Sometimes I would need to take showers at 3 in the morning because she would cuddle on me, and I would catch what she expelled. I was constantly scrubbing the carpet. It was taking a toll on both me and my boyfriend, mentally. I was losing sleep and watching my dog waste away. We made many expensive visits to the emergency room for her on nights where her puking was so abundant and violent we didn't know what else to do.

At around 9 months of age we finally got one of our vets to take her case a bit seriously. She was only 4 pounds and at that age a Boston Terrier should be near fully grown. I think it caught the vets attention and they agreed to look into it more.

In the (what I thought was) the end, Lucy had Pyloric Stenosis. The valve from her stomach into her small intestine was about the size of a pea. Anything bigger than a pea was not passing through. Instead it would sit in her stomach until she would finally puke it up. The vet did the surgery, and we thought she was on her way to make a full recovery.

Well, she didn't. In fact, she stopped eating altogether. She could eat without puking now, but she just wouldn't. I took her to the vet again and they told us to "make her comfortable until she passes." She was starving herself to death. They said sometimes, after this surgery, they do that and that's it.

I couldn't have that. I took her home, in tears, and on the way back thought of how I could get her to eat. And I thought of the idea of giving her foods that she just can't say no to. Sometimes, when I'm sick, I lose my appetite: but I'll still eat a bowl of ice cream. Why can't the same be for her?

So, we made "Lucy burgers". Hamburger with green beans or spinach, sometimes pumpkin. Rice or oats cooked in it as well. And she thrived. In that time she actually grew, and filled out really well. At one point she started throwing up the hamburger, so we switched it into chicken patties and she stopped vomiting. We would make about 20 at a time, keep some thawed in the fridge and some stored in the freezer. Being broke college students, Lucy ate better than we did sometimes. Her dinner was a hamburger with green beans: mine was a stale pop tart.

At this point preparing her food and spending the money on it had stretched us too far financially, and she had made such good progress, that we decided to reintroduce dog food. It went horribly. She would eat around hard food, and if we mixed in soft food she would refuse the whole me altogether. I called our vet and asked for advice; he said, "if a dog is hungry, they will eat." So, under this direction, I took away Lucy's patties and only offered her dog food.

She didn't eat for two days before she caved. And then she only ate to survive. Again, she wasted away. We tried so many different foods. Hard foods, soft foods, raw foods, you name it. Kibbles and bits to top shelf brands. Nothing. She would take to something from anywhere between a day to a couple weeks, but eventually would stop eating it.

This brings us to where we are now. After I finally realized that she was not going to cave and eat as much as she should before she died. So I started making her Lucy burgers again. She ate them: but just about as well as she ate the dog food. I could get her to eat ½-3/4 a cup full once a day. Just enough to survive. This panicked me because I thought it would help her but it didn't. I gave her chicken, which she loved the first couple of days and now: not so much. Her stool has become completely liquid. She's had liquid stool for a while now, but now there's blood in it. If she eats it's usually just a little bit in the morning and then she refuses food for the rest of the day.

I have been emailing with some vets at our hospital- one of the best vet hospitals in the US. But no one will see her unless we can pay for it up front. With me losing my job, it has been tight. I have an interview lined up next week at the hospital, but now with her bloody stool I'm not sure she could wait 4-6 months for me to have all the money I need saved up to help her.

In the end, our goal is just to help this puppy live a normal happy life. All she wants to do is cuddle on you and sleep. She's loved at her vets office because despite all of the horrible things that happen to her when she goes there she's always so happy to see everyone and gives tons of kisses. Otherwise, all she does is sleep. She doesn't play. She doesn't bark. She doesn't run. Just sleeps. Any money we raise will go towards all of the tests that we need to get done to diagnose her, and whatever treatment is necessary to help her. The first visit alone we were told would be 1000 dollars. If the hospital doesn't find anything wrong and we discover she's only anorexic from the trauma of eating the first half of her life, our only other option would be to "install" a feeding tube into her side, and I would feed her manually. In which case, any money that is raised will go towards that surgery. Given the amount of tests I know will need to be done (because no one seems to be able to find anything normally) and what ever surgery follows, I have set the donation goal to $5000.00 because the only vet that every other vet keeps telling us to talk to is not cheap.

Thank you for reading this far and caring about the heath and wellness of my baby girl. God bless.