Help Pepper Get Life-Saving Surgery

Hello, my name is Katie and this is Pepper.

Pepper is a 3yr old cattle dog mix that I rescued from Texas when she was just 9 weeks old in the beginning of 2021. Over the past almost 4 years of raising and loving Pepper, she has just become the light of my life and everyone around her's. She is the sweetest, friendliest, goofiest, most carefree pup you'll ever meet. She can befriend anyone, from other dogs, to strangers, cats and babies, its her goal to become everyone's best friend! She's been the most perfect companion to Ringo, our other, very dog reactive dog, becoming his absolute best friend and rock. She has helped him in opening up to meeting new people, gaining confidence and just being the best playmate he could ever ask for. Their bond is truly something special.

Unfortunately, over the past few months our happy, carefree girl has taken a turn for the worst. Around mid-August, we took Pepper into the vet for what we thought was just your average UTI. We treated it with the correct antibiotics and expected to see Pepper recover in no time. However, this wasn't the case. Pepper's symptoms continued to worsen. Pepper began excessively drinking water, becoming very lethargic, vomiting and losing weight quick, dropping almost half her body weight in these 2 months. Over the span from August with the first vet appointment to now, mid-October, Pepper has been back into the vet many many times, her team at Melrose Veterinary Hospital did everything they possibly could to get to the bottom of what was making Pepper so sick and treat it. We did test after test, monitoring her blood work and looking for anything that matched her symptoms, but everything came back negative and we saw little improvement over this time.

On the morning of October 18th, Pepper had an acute seizure. We rushed her to emergency to get her stable and were eventually transferred to a specialist hospital. Here our fears and suspicions over the last few months were confirmed. Pepper was diagnosed with having a liver shunt. This, although being something she was born with, did not present until now at almost 4yrs old. A liver shunt is an abnormal blood vessel in the liver that is diverting blood flow to the liver, causing it to not function properly and over time causing liver damage.

Now this diagnosis puts us in a win lose situation. On the plus side, there is a surgery to treat it, and with a successful surgery, Pepper can live a long, happy, relatively normal life! On the other hand, the surgery itself can cost upwards of $15,000+, not including the follow up visits that will come afterwards. Since the beginning of this journey back in August, to her current hospitalization, I have put close to $10,000 into her care already and so as you can imagine, funds are pretty much tapped at this point but I cannot fathom foregoing surgery after we have come this far to save her. This is why we are now reaching out to our community for support. Any funds raised will be going directly to her care with hopes of setting an appointment for surgery as soon as we can! Pepper is in wonderful hands with her team at VSH now, we just need the funds to let them work their magic!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read her story and if you are unable to donate yourself, please share this page with friends and family!

With much appreciation and very high hopes, Katie.