Emergency Vet Bills for Princess Pee Pee Face

This is Penelope, aka Princess Peepee Face, a 6 month old rescue puppy who needs help beating a life-threatening infection.

One night about month ago, I found her running loose in a park in North Hollywood with a badly broken arm, hiding in the brush by the freeway embankment. She was lost, scared, and had pretty clearly been hit by a car. Using the power of gentle coaxing, a slip leash, and kitty gogurts, I scooped her into my car, and spent the next week trying to find her family, reaching out to friends who ran rescues, and getting her X-rays.

She had big anime eyes, floppy ears, and her favorite thing in the world seemed to be cuddling me or chasing my older dog, and frantically kissing her face.

She was sweet, playful, and scary-smart, learning basic commands in just a few minutes. But she needed a $4K surgery to fix her broken arm, and I didn’t have that to spare. On 10/6, we made the heartbreaking choice to surrender her to the animal shelter, because they had a better and quicker chance of finding a rescue who could get her the surgery she needed.

She got her surgery within the week! But she ended up in the shelter’s medical bay limbo. All through October, I kept checking to see if anyone had adopted her. Day after day, nobody came for her, and the shelter eventually emailed me to ask if I could come get her. Even though I wasn’t sure if I could keep her, after 30 days at the pound, I was increasingly afraid she was getting lost in their medical system, so I went to pick her up. She had a mecha arm splint, her ears had popped up, and she still only wanted to kiss my older dog’s face.

When I took her to the vet after she was discharged, I expected a simple splint rewrapping. Instead, the vet found that she’d spent a horrifying 20 days in the shelter medical facility without a bandage change, and her stitches had become infected. She had a huge abscess, and the vet wanted X-rays and a culture to see how deep it went.

Penelope has a massive bone infection at the surgical site, surrounding both her healing bone and the metal plate the surgeon screwed in to stabilize it, and needs serious treatment to survive the infection. Her vets and I are waiting to hear from an orthopedic surgeon, culture the bacteria, run more X rays, and to see how she responds to antibiotics. We don’t know if she’s going to need a hardcore antibiotic regime, another surgery, or if she’s going to lose her arm. Whatever the next step is, she’s going to need a lot of care and a lot of community help.

If you can, I’d appreciate if anyone could chip in to help this very good girl get the care she needs. She’s come a long way from being found in the trash by the freeway, and I want to do everything I can to make sure she survives this.