Breathing Life Back Into Maddie

Katie and I met Maddie at the same time a few months back. Then, she wasn’t named Maddie. She was a nameless white adolescent that was dumped in a Walmart parking lot in the middle of a sub zero blizzard. We were at the emergency vet tending to a badly injured cat when Katie spotted Maddie in the back, lying limp on the floor of an oxygenated kennel, struggling to breathe. I listened from a distance as Katie asked questions. “Brought in by animal control,” they said. “We think pneumonia,” “dumped in a parking lot, in this weather no less…” while I was listening in, hypothesizing about how ruthless people can be, could you see anything but her nose in all that snow, did they know she was dreadfully sick, did they even look back when they pulled away- things of that sort, Katie was looking forward. Looking forward to Maddie spending her life in a home with Katie and her family, never cast aside again. All Maddie had to do was survive. If she could get past this round of pneumonia, spend three days at Capitol Humane Society unclaimed (c’mon. Of course they weren’t coming back for her) and then Maddie could live out the rest of very many years to come loved, fed, cared for like a member of the family. But it’s not been nearly that simple. Katie was beyond overjoyed to finally spring Maddie from CHS, but in a matter of hours, Maddie’s breathing was labored. And so began what is now nearly five consecutive weeks of veterinary care. Maddie would no more than make it back home to Katie and the family when she would be collapsing again just days later. Office visits at Clocktower followed- more than we can count. Visits at Cotner Pet Care, overnight stays in a very costly oxygen chamber back at Emergency Veterinary Services where their story began, only to return to another vet office the very next day. All of this culminates In theories about what might be happening to the sweet pup, thousands and thousands of dollars in bills, and this Wednesday, the decision to end the suffering of the baby that just couldn’t breathe anymore. But while on the table, as the doctor prepared the serum to send Maddie to eternal comfort, Maddie rallied. She sat up on the table, seemingly out of nowhere, pulled her tubes out, looked Katie straight in the face and without words said “not quite yet.” Four hours later, in the family vehicle converted into a makeshift ambulance, Maddie was on oxygen in the back seat as Katie cut their way through the dark to the renowned Iowa State’s Lloyd Veterinary Medical Center, where Maddie resides now, fighting to breathe, fighting for answers, fighting for the life she got to so briefly taste in the home with the people that love her without stipulations. Katie and the family have the same tenacity to save Maddie as Maddie has to save herself, but this last ditch effort to save her life comes with a hefty price tag- weighted additionally by the five weeks of vet care from the mounting crisis. While Iowa State runs the tests they need to determine the real reason Maddie is literally drowning in herself, the family is now drowning in debt. This dog deserves this family. This family deserves this dog. Can you help them help Maddie fight?