Donations for Tiger's Broken Jaw

Tiger is a 3 year old shar pei mix that is fills our house with laughter and love regularly. He is smart -he tends to learn new tricks within a week, he is funny -he will chase his tail when we have company over just to entertain them, and he is a total lovebug too -he immediately curls up next to me whenever I'm sick in bed (which has been happening a lot more often now that I'm pregnant). He knows when to cheer us up with play and he knows when it's best to cuddle up for petting. And let's be honest -he's just plain adorable (though he somehow manages to look like a random combination of at least 12 different dog breeds at any given time).


Unfortunately, Tiger also suffers from seperation anxiety. We read all kinds of information on crating and it seemed liked the safest way to leave him alone when we left the house -especially after the one time he wasn't crated and he tore a 3 foot by 3 foot hole in the carpet and the carpet padding trying to dig under the door to get to us. While he never liked being put in the crate, he never seemed too bothered by it afterwards as he was all too happy to go back in there when we got home and eat all the kibbles that fell out of his Kong toy. 


It seems some people have exagerated the safety of crating though, because when we came home from a hockey game recently, we discovered that he hurt his mouth somehow. His lip and gums were super swollen and even folded in over his teeth. At first we thought that he bit through his lip and that it got stuck on his tooth. It wasn't until we brought him to the vet the next day that we found out he actually broke his jaw. As it turns out, this type of injury is surpriginly common in wire crates and Tiger paid the price for our ignorance.


Ask any vet and they'll tell you that broken jaws are notoriously hard to fix and require a vet who specializes in dental work. In fact, there are only three vets in all of San Diego County that could do the surgery. We were also told that based on how bad the fracture was, it would cost anywhere from $2,000 to $4,500 to repair. While that is a lot of money, Tiger is our furry little bundle of joy and there was never any question about putting him down -especially when he is otherwise a healthy pooch that could easily live at least ten more years.


He had his surgery the next day and it took nearly four hours. The $3,500 estimate covered cleaning his teeth enough to do the repair, the repair itself (which consisted of wiring the jaw back in place and then applying a ceramic similar to what dentist use for temporary crowns to protect the wires), a root canal for the dead tooth at the break so it wouldn't fall out and damage the healed fracture, removal of all the wires and ceramic, a full teeth cleaning after the removal (because the teeth get very nasty sitting under the ceramic splint for two months) and two sessions of anesthesia -to do the work and then to remove it. The bottom two pictures below show the ceramic "splint" on his teeth.


The vet we ended up choosing guaranteed that the cost wouldn't go up even if they ended up having to do extra work. As it turns out, that was a great promise because Tiger needed an extra root canal on the tooth above the break and because the surgery itself, which they expected to be pretty simple, ended up being very, very complicated. In fact, rather than just wire the front of the jaw to the rear teeth like they normally do, they found that the jaw wouldn't fuse together unless they anchored the wires to the jaw bone below -and to do that, they needed to extract a small tooth near the fracture point as well (you can see the completed wires in that second x-ray picture and how they wouldn't fuse together in the picture below). 


He seems to be recovering from the surgery well and starting to act like himself again (the picture below is him right out of the hospital), but he still keeps licking the ceramic used to hold the wires down and he won't drink water (though we've been working around this by mixing his canned food with water). The vet assures us that he should get used to having his teeth covered up with the ceramic soon, but he's still going to feel weird for two months until its healed and he can't play with toys until then, which is sad for toy-loving Tiger.


We were able to set up monthly payments, but between our other monthly bills, the bill for the first vet I brought him to that did the X-ray to find the break and the fact that we have a baby on the way, we could use any help anyone is willing to give us towards paying this off. Every little bit helps, even just Go Fund Me's minimum donation, so if you can contribute thank you.


To all my friends and family members that can't afford to contribute, I understand that times are tough and I don't expect anything. If you can donate, thank you so much, if you can't, please share this with your friends instead. Also, if you want to donate goods or services to our rewards on this campaign, let me know and we could do that too. Thanks again everyone, even those who can't afford to donate. Z and I love you guys!


About the Reward Levels:
We want to thank everyone who donates to Tiger's surgery costs, so we're setting up rewards to show our appreciation. They may not be much, but we want to do something for those who help us out. Please know you can always choose a lower-level reward if you see something else you prefer.
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