The Grover Fund

My name is Russell Myers and Grover is my dog. Last night he was hit by a car. I was getting ready to leave when my fiancè let him out to see me. The neighbors across the street had set out a ton of free items of their curb. There were several people standing near the items on the curb two of them being our next door neighbors, whom Grover is familiar with. He saw them across the street and ran in a bee-line to them--he's a very social guy. My fiancè foresaw what was coming and ran, screaming after him trying to get him to stop before he entered the road. A black SUV hit him and didn't swerve or even tap the breaks. I too saw this happen and it was devastating. Grover rolled a few times in the road and ran into the house into his kennel because that's where he goes when he is in trouble and he was scared and wouldn't come out. The SUV that hit him didn't hit the brakes for about 100 yards after the site of the accident at which point it slammed on the brakes and turned the corner.The next door neighbors were running and screaming down the road after the SUV. A police officer passed shortly after and they flagged him down and told him to go get the SUV because it just hit our dog. The officer met the SUV on another block at which point they said they were intending to come back. They never did come back to even ask if our dog was okay. We rushed him to the IVRC--which has been our saving grace. When we arrived they rushed him back immediately since he had a massive trauma to his body. The x-rays confirmed that he had internal bleeding. We sat in the waiting room for 4 hours before we had to say our goodbyes and hope for the best. He was in critical condition, with a catheter inserted and connected to a heart-rate monitor it was very hard to stay hopeful.  His red blood count had now dropped from a normal 60 to 45. We were told that his blood would be taken hourly to check for his red blood cell level and that if it dropped to 20 they would have to give him a blood transfusion and proceed with surgery. I didn't get to sleep until 7 am because of the anxiety and I called every few hours to check on his status. In the morning, his red blood cell level was at 37 but the doctor said he was in stable condition. They had wrapped his abdomen to restrict blood flow to the area of the internal bleed, hoping this would allow the bleed to heal itself. He has been at the animal hospital all day and we are happy to say that his red blood cells are replenishing at this point and they are going to slowly remove the wrap. They will continue to monitor his red blood cell count and if it drops again they will have to reapply the wrap. They will continue this process 3x or until the red blood cell level climbs and remains at the normal level. If they have to do this more than 3x they will have to do surgery to repair the bleed. As of now the estimated cost on the low end is $1500 and $2500 for the high end. We also received a call today from the insurance of the woman that showed no remorse for hitting our dog and they are seeking the damages to her vehicle. We don't have renter's insurance so this will have to be paid out of pocket. She was speeding and not looking at the road and the police report says it was a no fault accident. However, there is a leash law in Iowa and although he was not out playing in the front yard and it was fluke occurrence it is legally our fault and we are responsible. We would have been happy to just fix our dog while she fixed her car but this doesn't seem to be the case. We didn't ever speak to her because we were in a hurry to save our fur child. The officer informed us that she had her car towed even though it was driveable and at this point I don't want to worry about the politics of insurance and the Iowa leash law. I just want to have my boy back home safe and sound. Assuming he pulls through we will be getting an invisible fence installed to ensure that nothing like this will ever happen again. His life is worth too much to us. He is also in between training sessions to be a service dog for me. I suffer from extreme anxiety is social situations and he has proved to help me with this significantly. Just to be clear the donations will include the vet bill, the SUV damages, and possibly and electric fence.