Pet Surgery: Chonky, 2yo M Lab Rottweiler

Hello beautiful people

It is with much anxiety and heartache that I request the generosity of strangers— after two weeks of struggling to eat and hold down food, my puppy, Chonky (Louie Lou), was diagnosed this morning(July 5th) with an unknown foreign body trapped in the beginning of his intestines.

The vet said it was shaped like a bolt nut but we are unsure what exactly it could be unless he literally ate some of my hardware… he’s a good dog, he gets into the trash if there’s food in the bin but we have a locking lid trash can. Other than his toys he doesn’t randomly eat things, so it’s hard to guess what could be going on.

We applied for Care Credit and called every pet society we could find but nowhere is capable of payment plans or providing additional financial assistance. We were fortunate enough that the Banfield Vet’s Hope Fund was offered to us, but that only covers up to $1,000 of the possibly $5,000 max that these surgeries can run. So far in total we have $2,700 towards the surgery, and our vet urged us to secure another $300 to safely account for any likely complications.

My wife and I are remote University teachers in FL. I’m an Eagle Scout. We decided against kids so our pets are our fur-kids: we have 4 cats, 3 dogs, and a bearded dragon. They all get along and have grown around each other since adoption. Chonky has two female companions: Daisy, our 3-year old Boston Terrier/Husky/Boxer mix, and Maple, our 1-year old Pit mix.

Under better circumstances we could traditionally cover these costs, but my wife had vocal cord contact ulcer surgery not a week before all this, tapping into our savings and emptying us out. We have no close friends or family we can rely on for help.

Please help us care for our special boy. He means a lot to us, and it pains us to consider how his 6 animal friends (excluding the bearded dragon cause he’s pretty indifferent) will react if he doesn’t come home.

Because invasive surgery like this is not a sure thing, we also hope that our friends reading can keep him in their hearts and minds- he’s a tough dog, not a pushover in the least, but we’d be lying if we said we knew he would be fine.

Thank you for reading.

I hope all of you and your pets are well.