Operation Train Zeus!

Hi! I'm Keri, mom friend of Whitney Milek who is the mom of Wade and fur mama to Thor & now Zeus. We're here to help share their story and raise funds for Thor's care while here who was Wade's super-service dog. After learning Thor had Leukemia and having to make a difficult decision to relieve him of his pain, the family has welcomed Zeus into the family as Wade's soon-to-be super-service dog. It will take some time and funding to help the family recover from Thor's treatment costs as well as fund Zeus's training costs. Please consider helping!

Wade is a 12 year old boy who was diagnosed with seizures at the tiny age of 1 week old. Since then Wade has battled ongoing seizures year after year. After years of rotating sleep shifts, Whitney and her husband Nate were blessed to be introduced to an organization that helps kids with a medical need be matched to a service dog that is trained in their area of need. Wade was matched with superdog, Thor! In this case, Thor uses his super-service dog strength and abilities to roll Wade over in the event of a seizure and keeps Wade on his side so that Wade does not aspirate or suffocate, especially during the night. The tremendous weight of exhaustion, stress & worry was lifted when Wade and Thor became bonded as best buds 5 years ago.

Recently, Thor hasn't had a lot of thunder like he should. He's been diagnosed as having been exposed accidentally to a toxin in a livestock/canine worming medication. This is usually safe for dogs but in Thor's case, a rare reaction happened with Thor. Wade woke up to a lethargic Thor, so they took him to the local vet who sent Thor back home to rest and get better. On Wednesday, January 29th, Thor was on a rapid decline. Frantic, Whitney rushed Thor back to the local vet who was now convinced that Thor had leukemia. His symptoms, his blood work, and his physical exam all pointed to that. But his lead vet wasn’t going to stop looking and give Thor that diagnosis without trying harder. They sent Thor and Whitney on to a larger vet facility a few hours away. By Thursday morning, Thor had a team of 15 pathologists, oncologists, and internal doctors going through everything, running more tests, and ruling out all scenarios through multiple questions about Thor's day-to-day life. One of those questions was about the potential exposure to different things. One of the things is a certain kind of wormer used in a lot of livestock and dogs. However, this same wormer is toxic to some dogs and causes an autoimmune response. The body attacks the bone marrow and it looks exactly like leukemia. The difference between that leukemia is how it responds to different medications. Through trying different treatments they determined that Thor was exposed to this wormer and it was toxic to him. With treatment Thor can make a complete recovery. The treatment isn’t hard on him and he feels better each day.

Wade and family aren’t fighting to take Thor home for a short period or just trying to buy more time with him. They are fighting to take Thor home to go back to work for Wade. In the past weeks, Whitney has asked the doctor multiple times if Thor was suffering or if they were doing more harm than good. The answer was consistently no, in fact the opposite. They were giving his body what it needed to heal. Thor wasn’t ready to give up, so Wade couldn’t give up on him. If Thor can't be at home the risk to Wade is hard to justify. As a parent you will move heaven and earth for your kids, but when those choices impact their health it is taken to a new level. If we knew that Thor was destined to a bad outcome or going to suffer we would not be pushing forward. We would have done what was right by him. Thor and Wade deserve the best fighting chance and that is healing Thor so he can help Wade with his super-service dog abilities.

Whitney was also asked last night if it would be better to let Thor go and get Wade a new dog. The simple answer to that is “no”. The reality of getting Wade another dog would be 2-3 years and close to $70,000 once all said and done. Not to mention the chance of finding Wade another dog that will share the same bond he and Thor have. Thor isn’t just a dog. He is Wade’s hero. They didn’t go through the past 6 years of this process to give up on Thor. Thor is making huge improvements every single day. He is telling us it isn’t his time to go. He will has a long road of continued treatment with their local vet and with that comes a long list of costly treatments, monitoring, tests, medications and infusions to get Thor back to 100%.

This is where you come in! You have a super-service ability too! You can help Thor by donating to his medical treatment. These are on average $1,200 per treatment and Thor will be averaging 4.5 treatments per month for 6 months. That's $32,400 in treatments alone! You can help Wade, Whitney and family with all of the costs associated with transporting Thor to his treatments, helping with the cost of those treatments and medications and making sure that Wade (and mom and dad) get to sleep soundly knowing that Wade has his super-service dog that will use his super-service ability to keep Wade alive each and every night. What amount can you donate to help Thor get his thunder back? Click that donate button and let's get Thor on his way to Wade's side where he belongs!