Help for Little Higgins Eye Surgery
Hello friends, friends of friends, and strangers. My name is Matt, I live in Orlando FL.
The purpose of this campaign is raise money to help pay for the surgery and vet bills for my baby bulldog Higgins, who was bit in the eye by a large rottweiler.
Here is how it happened. We were at a community BBQ here in Orlando, a family and pet friendly event that happens a few times a year where people bring their kids, dogs, and there's even a little pig who comes out on occasion. The vibe in incredible, some very talented DJ's bring their audio equipment out and play awesome music under the giant oak trees in the shade, people bring and share food and drink, there's typically a community art surface with paint and brushes for people to create a collective piece of art, everybody is friendly and drama free, and all about the community aspect of it. All the dogs run around without leashes, people throw frisbees and footballs around, play soccer, lounge in the grass, kids are hoola-hooping along with some adults.... It's one of me and Higgins' favorite things to do in Orlando (I've been to many, Higgy has been to the only two that have taken place since he was born). I'll include a picutre of the environment I am trying to paint with words here.
Anyway, Higgins was running around doing what he does best, making people happy being cute and friendly and playful and rolling around like the little butterball he is. Playing with the dogs and people alike. 
Then, at some point, somebody dropped a piece of food, and Higgins and the rottweiler both went after it. The rottweiler snapped at Higgins, and caught him in and around his eye. One of the teeth caught his third eyelid and ripped it up really bad. As you can see from the pictures it was almost ripped it completely out. (sorry if you get grossed out easily) Fortunately it will be able to be fixed with surgery to the point he will have full vision out of that eye.
Just to be clear, this was not some random viscious attack by a breed stigmatized for being violent, this was more human error more than anything in my opinion. The owner of the dog felt horrible and offered to help me out however he could, but it wasn't his fault whatsoever so I didn't ask him for anything as we left the BBQ to take Higgy to the closest animal emergency room open on a Saturday afternoon. I can't thank my friend enough for driving us there since I rode to the BBQ on my bike with Higgins in the basket.
We have let it heal for over a month now, putting steroid ointments and lubricants in his eye hoping that it would heal on it's own and pull back into place. Unfortunately it hasn't because the lacerations were at the attachement point, and through the thin piece of cartiledge that runs through the eyelid, so it is going to require surgery to pull it back into place so he can completely see out of his right eye again.
The eye specialist and emergency vet bills so far have totalled $600 bucks, and the surgery is going to be about $900, which is where I came up with the $1500 target.
As anybody who knows me will tell you, I hate asking for money, or help with anything for that matter. However this has been the most financially (and mentally) taxing year of my life. (I know, whaa whaa whaa every body has hard times in life here and there blah blah blah), but I will summarize my only the financial aspects of my sob story with a few key points:
- early in the year i let a good friend of mine borrow my vehicle because he was currently without one, and low and behold, he got into an accident and it was totaled (not his fault, everybody was ok thankfully).
- i decided i could live without a vehicle for a while and used my bicycle as my main mode of local transportation. which is an awesome thing to do if you can, for so many reasons (your health, the environment, etc.) then my bike got stolen!
- bought a new vehicle (by bought i mean bought, no loans for vehicles, that is not a wise move), and in a month or so, the automatic transmission quit working. 2000 dollar repair.
- a friend spilled a glass of wine on my computer, had to buy a new computer
- my phone quit working, had to buy a new phone
- eventually bought a new bike to try to get back to the my original plan of only using a gas powered vehicle when needed.
-oh yeah my identity was friggin stolen! full on, the most critical information you can think of. can't go into details about that for security purposes, but yeah that was the icing on the cake.
- ^^^ these bullets are just scratching the surface, could keep going , but don't want to lose your interest. Point being I can't afford to help restore Higgins' vision at this point.
Long story short, little Higgins didn't deserve this, and given all of the ridiculous things that 2015 has been brought upon both Higss and I (and so many people that I care about), I am hoping that lady karma will return at least a small portion of the good karma that we have been doing our collective best to instert into the universe. In any form. I hope and believe that an entity that brings joy to a community would receive the same energy in return in a situation like this.
Thank you thank you thank you for taking the time to read all of this. I hope we can get Higgins back to his normal purpose of making everybody who looks at him smile, instead of scaring small children with a meatball for an eye. Which does happen now, if I take him out to any public place where kids are. Let's get him back to where he has full vision and depth perception out of both eyes.
Here is a couple pictures of Higgy before the attack: 
his right eye before the incident.
just being cute
missing out on fun puppy play time to protect his eye. just wants to go outside and play with his neighbor friends but can't!
I don't expect $1500 out of this, I hold myself partially accountable for not keeping an eye on him 100% of the time to make sure he was safe. But every little bit will help!
Lasly, here's a video of Higgins, chilling on the steps, listening to the birds. Whenever I feel stressed or negative in any way, I watch this and am immediately at peace. Feel free to do the same :)
Thank you again. Matt.