Rescue Doberman Needs Your Help
Can you help a local rescue, a Doberman that needs your help, to find the perfect home? In this episode of Saving DMV, I’m going to share the story of Simera, a Doberman we rescued who needed extensive surgery on all four limbs. I’ll walk you through what it took to get this loving dog back on her feet to see if you might be able to support her journey.
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: 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 sort of 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, and 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, which is where you’re all knot in your elbow. In dogs, it can keep growing. It’s likely a birth defect, causing bone fragments to form where the bone has chipped the elbow in its growing process.
Expensive Surgeries
Because of all her issues, Simera needed to have surgery to remove the bone fragments from her elbows. This means she needed surgery on all four limbs. 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 later, 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 about $15,200. On Monday, she just had surgery on both of her elbows that cost about 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 live a pain-free life.
Simera’s an expensive lady. Right behind her, we had another dog come in named Samson that also needed surgery—which cost about $4,200 in total.
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!
