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Help Porter pay his bills

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Meet Porter Weber-DeSimone. He is said to be a Boxer/American Bulldog/Pit Bull mix and he has the sweetest disposition, loves to cuddle and genuinely adores making his humans happy. He's 9-11 weeks old and has had a rough start to life.
He has contracted parvovirus.

"Canine parvovirus is a highly contagious viral disease that can produce a life-threatening illness. The virus attacks rapidly dividing cells in a dog’s body, most severely affecting the intestinal tract. Parvovirus also attacks the white blood cells, and when young animals are infected, the virus can damage the heart muscle and cause lifelong cardiac problem." - pets.webmd

- this was taken two hours before we decided to take him for an emergency vet visit -

We are hoping to raise enough money to:

1) pay for Porter’s vet bill (currently it is about $1,500) and take the burden off 11th Hour Rescue so other animals can get immediate care as Porter did. No matter the outcome, the funds will go directly to 11th Hour Rescue from Porter in a big fat check as his (and our) way of saying thank you for all of the hard work the volunteers do for pets. 

Please donate and share this post!
If you are an animal lover, human supporter, a believer in companionship or just want to give to a good 'cause the weather is nice today, please consider donating. Every dollar counts! You will be informed of Porter’s progress and how much is raised and allotted to each of our four goals. If you are someone who likes to know exactly where your money goes once you give a donation, this is the right cause.


Read on to learn why Porter is so special and why he and 11th Hour Rescue need your help now!

On Valentine's Day, Mike and I drove to the 11th Hour Rescue in Randolph, NJ to meet him and his foster mom. We have been having the "puppy talk" for some months now and were just starting the process of looking. As previous dog owners, we knew adopting was the way to go, but neither of us have ever adopted a dog. The entire ride there we told each other that we are just starting the process and that we don't have to take him if we don't think he is the perfect fit (we have two older cats - best cats ever but it is important for us to have the fur-babies get along). 
SPOILER ALERT: THEY WERE ON THEIR WAY!
Before we walked in to 11th Hour we turned to each other and said, "no matter what let's just take a day to think about it." Plus, if you know us you can assume that we had Valentine's Day plans to go out that night, grab a nice dinner and find some exclusive and great beer to celebrate the "holiday". Twenty minutes later we were signing papers, handed the leash and were more than happy to forgo the dinner and beer (and many dates in the future) to care for our new fur-baby! He is perfect.
We brought him home and we couldn't be happier with our new addition to our family. He is a fast learner, learned to sit right away, a lover of snuggles and never wants to be left alone. And that puppy smell gets me every time!

Now for the heartache:
We noticed he had diarrhea (nothing crazy but definitely raised concern, especially for us being rusty with raising a puppy). He constantly wanted to go out or had accidents. He's 8 weeks old of course he isn't potty trained so we worked with him and were on the way to getting him trained. The second day and night he would go out twice an hour... sometimes he didn't go #2 but when he did he would squat there for 4 entire minutes shivering with strain and from the cold. He was eating and drinking as he should but we noticed he was getting skinnier and not fattening up (which it's been 24 hours in a new place so the alarm bells didn't sound just yet). 
He was still playful, alert and loving. He was also eating and drinking water. Mike and I slept on the couch that night with him and had a mini sleepover to get him used to sleeping with us before taking him upstairs to the carpeted bedroom. 

The next morning he slept in so late. Until about 10am, which I found super strange. When he did wake up enough to get him pumped to go outside he went but struggled to poo and nothing was coming out. I took him in and he didn't even want a treat... RED FLAG #1! He puppy pranced his way back to the couch and curled up, neglecting his breakfast and didn't even stop for a drink... RED FLAG #2-#5!!
If you aren't familiar with Parvo, you're lucky! His status went down hill rapidly and was becoming increasingly lethargic by the hour and then the vomitting started."Canine parvovirus is a highly contagious viral disease that can produce a life-threatening illness. The virus attacks rapidly dividing cells in a dog’s body, most severely affecting the intestinal tract. Parvovirus also attacks the white blood cells, and when young animals are infected, the virus can damage the heart muscle and cause lifelong cardiac problem." - pets.webmd 

I took him to the Warren Animal Hospital near us immediately (thank you Kelley for telling Mike how urgent this was). They did the test and warned me that this was a very severe and life threatening illness in puppies and many didn't make it through the [very expensive and extensive] treatment. The results were in before the 10 minutes it was supposed to take to get a result... Positive. The vet and the vet tech could literally hear my heart breaking in my chest. I am even tearing up while typing this. Porter felt me getting upset and tried to give me kisses, wagging his tail and was whimpering in my lap to get my attention and make me stop crying... which inevitably made the sobbing worse. I was absolutely hysterical.

When you adopt an animal from the shelter (or any puppy for that matter, from anywhere), they know there are chances of the disease and very much make you aware of the risks. A puppy isn't fully vaccinated from the parvovirus until after the three rounds of puppy shots. A puppy isn't fully protected until he/she has had all three of the rounds of puppy shots. This illness is transmitted through K9 fecal matter and just 1 oz has over 35 MILLION parvovirus cells in it.  It takes about 7-10 days to incubate and produce symptoms once contracted. To make matters worse, it is easily spread and anything the puppy has come in contact with is now in question for housing parvovirus. 

11th Hour Rescue works closely with the Animal Clinic of Morris Plains and I was instructed to go there and that he would have to be taken immediately into the ICU into quarantined and placed on life support. There were no questions asked about payment and not one sign of hesitation on their part to get him the costly treatment he needs. He was only part of our lives for two days but neither Mike nor I could imagine our lives without him. 

We are hopeful that we caught this and brought him into care early enough for him to fight this. He was admitted Thursday at 3:30pm and the extremely nice vet techs had to pretty much pry him off my chest (mostly because I was holding on to him so tight... ugh tears again!). We paid for the initial visit to Warren and would never ask 11th Hour to reimburse us because we do not have to pay a dime for his treatment at Morris Plains... But someone has to and that falls on 11th Hour Rescue, who spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to care for the animal they rescue each year. 

Please consider donating and sharing this with your network!
This situation could turn anyone off to adopting but I can't explain to you the level of overwhelming support that has come from 11th Hour Rescue and honestly, if we didn't have them to advise us and help, Porter would 100% not have survived even this long. We want our family, friends and strangers to see and read about our experience and know that no matter what, adopting Porter was the right thing to do. 



Thank you so much for your love, support and kind words of hope and encouragement! Cheers to Porter's recovery and coming home with his mommy and daddy soon!!

Love,
Meg, Mike and Porter

P.S. Took us two days and throwing around dozens of names... but why did we named him Porter?
1) For the beer reference duh!
2) He had as much poop as a porter potty
3) He has a spot on his nose that is the shape of a Porterhouse steak!


Here are about half of the pictures and videos we have of him from those mere 48 hours we had him. 

<iframe media_type="0" media_id="zkpTQdoZfmk" class="youtube-replace" title="YouTube video player" style="margin-bottom:20px;width:560px;height:315px;" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/zkpTQdoZfmk/?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="1"></iframe>Chatting with Ansel

First day home!

Sleepy pup

Bleep the peep!

<iframe media_type="0" media_id="n4RB2usX-h4" class="youtube-replace" title="YouTube video player" style="margin-bottom:20px;width:560px;height:315px;" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/n4RB2usX-h4/?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="1"></iframe>Running with piggy [which is now in the garbage :(]

Organizer

Meg Weber
Organizer
Phillipsburg, NJ

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