Run, Dex, Run!

Today, I took my baby boy to the vet. He's been favoring his right back leg for a couple of weeks, but in the last few days he barely let the paw touch the floor. Worried he may have a sprain or something, I took my vivacious runner in to be checked out. I was mildly surprised when the vet asked to do an x-ray, and mortified when she told me he has suffered a cruciate ligament rupture. A crucia-what??? my brain panicked as she whipped out this nifty faux bone joint with rubber gummy-worm things attached. Turns out those gummy worms represented the ligaments of a dog's knee, and my sweet Dexter, 4 years of age-- can't keep him out of the water and he will chase a tennis ball all afternoon, has ruptured one.

My dog, built for running with long gangly limbs, large chest, tiny torso, and a tail that acts more rudder than tail, has been grounded. Grounded, not even by a tragic accident, but by the simple mechanics-gone-wrong of his back legs. Any of the simple activities he enjoys the most could be the hideous culprit. I was shocked. Shocked, and heart broken when the vet told me the only way that leg will function properly or painlessly for him again was surgery. Surgery with the hefty price tag of about what I make in my monthly income. My options, simply enough, were to do nothing and let my dog live the rest of his life limping and suffering arthritic pain, a simple surgery that is like patching his knee up with duck tape, or a comprehensive surgery that would fix his ligament and his knee, preventing further degeneration. What's not so simple in those options is the morality or price tags.

I've set up this fundraiser to try to get to the amount it would take for them to reattach the bones at the back of the knee and let my dog's quality of life resume. Ideally, I'd be able to raise the money for the better surgery, but it would cost me about the same as my last car.... so on a hope and a prayer, I'm only asking friends and strangers to help me get Dexter up and running again, it's all I ask for. Even if we only raise a few dollars, just a few would be more than enough.