Save Shade: fixing a broken heart

Let me introduce to you Shade; our 15 week old weimaraner who has been diagnosed with Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA) - a congenital heart defect that, left untreated gives him a 66% chance he won't make it to September 17, 2016....his first birthday.

Shade the first night in his new home with our family.

We traveled to Quebec to pick him up at 10 weeks and in only 5 short weeks he has won our hearts and become part of our home. 

4 Months earlier we added another new member to our family our third child (2 girls, 1 boy).   As such money is tightly budgeted and to fix our puppy's heart requires a very expensive procedure that will stress our financial limits considerably.

Shade with our new baby daughter.

When we first met and picked Shade up, we were informed of his heart murmur, but understood it to be inconsequential....a  murmur that would heal itself, or remain as is without consequence to his health.

I'm sure it sounds ignorant for us to believe this at face value, however at the time, our 14 week (now 19 week) old daughter was born with a heart murmur as well, described as inconsequential...a murmur  that would heal itself, or remain as is without consequence to her health. Thankfully this is true for our daughter, however Shades recent visit with our vet has confirmed the opposite, his murmur has significant ramifications.  

December 28th, during an appointment with our vet to complete shots, Shade was diagnosed with PDA. An in depth reference for this defect is described here:

In Depth PDA Information

Hard to believe. Shade bounces around seemingly fine at times and others seems distressed and weary. 

Treatment for PDA involves surgically tying off of the ductus with a piece of suture or coil. A simple diagnosis involves a cardio consult somewhere in the neighborhood of $250, chest radiographs averaging $260 and an echo averaging $500. Surgery has been estimated between $3000 - $5000. 

Based on information given to us by our vet,  we have been informed the surgery has a very high success rate leading him to live a full and healthly life afterwards. This makes us very hopeful.

Time is a concern at this point. We are waiting for a cardio consult to be arranged. We have stopped a lot of the vigorous playing keeping things as calm as can be which i'm sure you can imaging is quite the feat with an eager 5 year old girl and a puppy that wants to match that energy. His walks have been kept short and sweet not to put unnecessary strain on his heart.

When he hiccups, it creates pause. When he sleeps and we see his little heart beating out of his chest, we pause. It broke our heart to see our lab  of 15 years pass away in June, and we're certainly not ready to lose another loved one any time soon.  That passion to ensure at the end of it all we did all we could for him has lead us here.

Even the smallest of donations will be accepted with appreciation and deep gratitude.  The money being raised does not cover all costs but will allow our family to comfortably cover the remainder of this procedure.

"Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean." —Ryunosuke Satoro

Thank You,

The Drake Family