Harmon's Vet Bills

Hi everyone,

My name is Mike and I have a story of a pretty unique puppy.  Harmon was found on the shores of Lake Cumberland, KY on June 28th, 2014.  He was underweight, dehydrated and had several open wounds infested with maggots.  He was fortunate that a large group of guys visiting for a bachelor party stumbled upon him that day.  We did our best to clean him up -- seven ticks were removed from his ears.  He got two baths to remove most of the maggots.  We were concerned about a hind leg that he could not bear weight on.

He travelled with a group of the guys back to Chicago to get vet care and find a home.  We were fortunate that a close friend (Megan) was able to foster Harmon and bring him to his first vet appointment.  By Monday afternoon, he had received most of his standard puppy shots, deworming and vaccinations.  An X-Ray of his leg revealed two broken bones below his knee.  He had surgery that day to insert pins to stabilize the leg.



While he was asleep they cleaned up all of his maggot infestations.  The vet called Megan afterwards to say the wounds were actually talon punctures.  It appears he was picked up by a turkey vulture or another bird of prey in the area.



Within a couple days of surgery Harmon was a whole different puppy.  He was playing with Megan's two toddlers and her black lab.  He was slightly hobbled by the pins in his leg but some pain medicine helped keep him moving.

Around this time, Megan and her family had decided they could continue to foster Harmon until he found a good permanent home, but that they were better suited as a family to forgo this adoption in order to serve as a resource for future strays.  This put my wife, Nicole, and I in a difficult spot.  We had just moved into a new apartment that did not allow dogs.  We wanted so desparately to get him a good home and were getting more attached to him by the day, despite him spending most of his time with his foster family.  We asked our building management if we could transfer to a dog-friendly floor.  This meant moving the contents of our two bedroom down three stories.  After hearing the story of Harmon, the building manager agreed to allow us to move despite not living in the current unit long enough to meet transfer criteria.  Nicole, who is some sort of mechanical super creature (love you!), was on board to move once more... I forgot to mention she was 33 weeks pregnant at this moment.  So instead of finalizing our nursery last Wednesday we put it on hold and scheduled a meeting with the manager to sign a new lease.

This Saturday, July 12th, 2014 we will move with the help of a few friends and Harmon will have his forever home.

The exclusive purpose of this GoFundMe endeavor is to recover the cost of two vet bills Harmon accrued last Monday. The first vet visit was $300; the orthopedic surgeon was $2400.  Any contributions are appreciated though I would caution that PayPal pulls an additional cut from any donation on top of the 5% this website takes.  Also, and perhaps most importantly, if the goal happens to be surpassed the additional money will be donated to Alive Rescue Chicago (www.aliverescue.org).  One of Harmon's original rescuers (Adam) works closely with this shelter and we would like to show our appreciation for all that they do.

Thanks and feel free to share!

Mike