June Needs Surgery

Robert Hill is organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Elizabeth Yaap.

Donation protected

Many of you know June well or have at least met or heard of her through our family ramblings and shared photos of her. For those that don't, June is our newly turned 3-year-old, much-loved family dog. She's a large (90 lbs.), extremely sweet livestock guardian dog (½ Maremma, ¼ Great Pyrenees, ¼ Anatolian Shepherd) living a delightful life with us in Ellensburg, WA. Not having a livestock herd to guard, she spends her days looking over the house, our family, and the neighborhood kids that flow through to play in the yard each day.

Unfortunately, late last week she sustained a major injury. While driving through a remote forested road to go camping she had her head out the car window, enjoying the breeze (a norm for her) when she must have seen something enticing enough to draw her to jump out the window while the car was traveling along at 40 miles per hour. She hit the metal guard rail on the side of the road and landed in a state that left her hind legs badly injured and unable to walk. After a rather traumatic 6 hours of emergency transport and care (including assessment from the vet in Ellensburg), we arrived at the ICU at Washington State University's Veterinary Hospital in the far east of the state. June is still in the ICU where they have stabilized her over the past four days and are preparing her for surgeries to repair extensive damage to both pelvic femur sockets. The orthopedic specialist here has assured us that the recovery and suffering that she has gone through up until now is not in vain as the outcomes of this surgery are very promising with a high likelihood that she will get to live a long, comfortable, and close to normal life (with a slightly abnormal gait, but without residual pain).

We'd like to emphasize that we have been prepared to put June to sleep if the suffering is/was going to be too great. We are here in Pullman visiting with her daily and getting twice-daily updates from the veterinarians in the ICU. We are encouraged by June's disposition and response to us (wagging her tail when she hears our voices or sees us). At this point, we are following the advice of the clearly skilled and capable veterinarians at the WSU facility, who have assured us that financing for the surgeries (one for each side of her pelvis) and a commitment to 8 weeks of intensive post-surgery physical therapy are the major limitations we face. After extensive consultation with the veterinary specialists, we are confident that we can meet her post-surgery care needs.

Currently, our only limitation with moving forward with surgeries is financial. We were very hesitant to create a GoFundMe page so as not to burden others or divert from others in need, but we were convinced by several people that many people contributing a small amount can be a very powerful approach, heavily reducing the financial consequences for our family. The hospital is a non-profit organization and teaching hospital, yet her care still comes with a heavy price tag of $20,000 - $25,000 just for the surgeries and ICU care. We were assured by our vet in Ellensburg that this was the least expensive place in Washington to get the care June needs.

For those of you that know first-hand and understand the kind of love and relationship we humans can have for a pet and enjoy reading about and seeing photos of such... below we've compiled a collection of our favorite June photos that tell her story and the joy she brings us as a family.

June is a porch dog, keeping a good eye on our house...