Local DC/MD Realtor Raises Funds
I have a big spring goal – I am fundraising $20,000 to pay for doggie surgery bills.
In this episode of Saving DMV, I’m going to share the story of Simera, a 3 year old Doberman we rescued who needed surgery on all four limbs. I walk you through her journey and what it is taking to get this loving dog back on her feet and to see if you might be able to support her.
Simera’s Story
As the foster home coordinator and a Board member of DAR&E, the local Doberman rescue, I see a lot of sad cases. You may remember our story of Mozart from last April. We have another one: Meet Simera.
Simera is a beautiful three-year-old Doberman. She’s active and loves to play, yet is very gentle with people. All she wants is your love and attention, always. When she came to us, she had a weird way of sitting. Her legs were splayed out underneath her side, and her knees and her elbows were enlarged. She couldn’t do stairs properly because she couldn’t bend her knees correctly.
We took Simera to an orthopedic specialist, and he said she should look worse than she does. This poor dog had issues in all of her limbs. The specialist suspected she had torn her CCL in both knees. This is a non-healing ligament tear, so she needed TPLO (Tibial Plateau Leveling Osteotomy) surgery on both knees. He also suspected that her meniscus was shot in both knees.
But that’s not all. She also had a Fragmented Coronoid Process (FCP), which is where the ulna keeps growing in the elbow and causes the bone to break into fragments. It’s likely a birth defect. She needed to have surgery to remove the bone fragments.
Surgeries Begin
The first of her surgeries was TPLO surgery on one of her knees. While the actual surgery itself went well, she had a really rough recovery. We had to do several more medical procedures to keep the incision site closed and healing properly. We even had to get some medical maggots involved, but I won’t go into details.
12 weeks post-op she got the all-clear from her orthopedic surgeon and she was ready to go back to being a dog. She was even allowed to have a little bit of off-leash time. At this point, Simera’s regular vetting through knee surgery cost us ~$15,200. On Monday, she just had surgery on both of her elbows that cost another ~$3,500. We don’t regret paying for this vet care; she’s worth it and she’s a great dog. She wants to be happy and carefree and in order to have a pain-free life she needed to have these surgeries. Simera’s an expensive lady.
Enter Samson
Right behind her, we had another dog come in named Samson. He also needed surgery, which cost ~$4,200.
Can You Help?
In light of all these expensive surgeries, I’m here with a new goal to fundraise $20,000 to help pay for the vet care for these dogs. We’ve set up a GoFundMe page and, whether you have $10 or $500, anything counts.
If you can’t contribute financially, please consider sharing this video with your friends and family. If you want to contribute, simply click on the link above and head over to the GoFundMe page.
After all of the amazing support that we got for Mozart last year, let’s do it again! Let’s go team! It’s dog-saving time!
