20,000 to save my 10 month old dogs life, please help me
Hi everyone, I'm Jess and I'm being swallowed up with anxiety and stress and need help. I'm just going to be honest and speak from the heart. I am so overwhelmed and sickened by everything going on with my puppy Honey. We adopted her when she was a baby and started noticing weird symptoms from the time she was just a couple months old. I got her pet insurance as recommended by her vet and after much pushing I finally got my answer. She has a congenital liver shunt. My boyfriend and I have gone into big debt covering her coil surgery along with related expenses. It was a large shunt and during the surgery she ended up being under for 4 hours and needing more coils than usually anticipated. We have spent well close to 20,000 at this point for her surgery and connected costs. She's still struggling post recovery as well. We submitted our claims to pets best, her insurance and they have denied coverage completely. They listed the one documented vet visit she had prior to her insurance where we mentioned pickiness with food and eating less as their proof for denial stating it's a pre-existing condition. I'm honestly not handling this well. I feel like I've done everything right. A little about me you should know. I love taking care of others. I'm a therapist at a high school working with kids and my boyfriend is the same way as he works at a children's hospital as a RT, we don't usually ask for help, but we are feeling so defeated. This debt is smothering us. We love Honey so much and want to continue to afford her care, but we have maxed out our cards doing what was needed to be done. and have thought about taking on second jobs to pay them off. Without this surgery her life expectancy was 1 year, and it would have been a progressing potentially painful demise. Unlike human health needs, with animals if you want something done for them you have to pay in full. We don't know how were going to continue to pay for her care with this total hanging over us, but we're going to try because we love her. I feel so defeated because I didn't get my baby without giving it a lot of thought. I was ready for the financial responsibility, but understandably I was not ready for this. My bf and I were in a place where we were talking about getting married, moving forward with life, getting a house, and feeling financially stable and ready for the expense of a dog and now we feel so far from the life we felt so close to. Please even if you're just spreading the word. I am asking for anything to help push the gofundme I created forward.
Posted Sep 3, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC