Help with Ruger’s Emergency Surgery

Hello. We are the Russell’s, Dan and Kaileen and we live on a small Ranch outside of Tucson, AZ. We depend on our dogs to protect our animals from coyotes, mountain lions, etc. As such they have become members of our family! We are in need of help in a big way!

Ruger the Great Dane was emergently rushed to the vet last night with what Kaileen expected was bloat. He was in so much pain as his abdomen was swelling and hard as a rock. Upon getting to the vet, the x ray showed his intestines were twisted around themselves cutting off blood flow to everything below the point of twisting. In Ruger’s case our options were emergency surgery or euthanasia.

We chose to do everything in our power to save our fur babie’s life, after all he is a member of our family! Due to the time of day (not during normal business hours) and the severity of his case, a specialty surgeon had to be called in to perform Ruger’s operation! This added to an already high emergency vet bill.

Ruger did well through his surgery last night according to the surgeon. He developed an arrhythmia overnight requiring him to be on a continuous medication drip for at least 24 hours. Hopefully this will fix the arrhythmia. The vet today said he’ll need to stay at least the night tonight again.

We are asking a lot, especially in these hard financial times and we know that. At this point we do not know what else to do. Kaileen has been home sick with COVID for over a week and is unable to return to work for an undetermined amount of time.

If you can spare anything, it would greatly help the Russell family!