Posts in Category: Veterinary Grant Recipients

In August, 2011, Oksana and Eric Schwartz took their two dogs to a dog park not far from their West Hollywood apartment.

“A man came over to us and said he had found a dog tied up to a pole there and asked if it belonged to somebody,” Oksana said. “The dog [a chihuahua] had this little harness on and he had grown into it and it wouldn’t buckle up any more. It was so tight I couldn’t pull it over his head.  We had to cut it off. He was really underweight and had a broken leg.

“My husband has a soft spot for little dogs and he said: ‘Well he’s not ours but we’ll take him and  . . . see what we can do.’ We took him to Blue Cross Pet Hospital in North Hollywood. We’ve been taking our dogs there for a long time. And it turned out the dog had a broken hip on top of the broken leg.

Dr. James Walters, co-owner of the hospital, told the couple that the dog needed surgery. Eric is in the Marine Corps and Oksana works as a projects manager. She told Walters that they could not afford to pay for an operation. “‘We’d love to,’ I said, ‘but this is not our dog.’ My bigger dog was in a car accident less than six months before and we had been paying off that vet bill as well,” she said.

“The hospital offered to do the surgery for almost 50 percent off . . . so we finally decided to have it done. They had to put four pins, I think, in his leg. Our veterinarian told us after the surgery that somebody probably had kicked him and that the hip injury was a really old injury.”

The hospital took more than $700 off its bill and helped the Schwartzes obtain an Angel Fund grant. Oksana created a Facebook page for Murray, as they decided to call the dog, and a couple of friends contributed, too. “The fact that we got some help with the bill was really great,” she said.

“But we couldn’t find a place for him. Nobody really wanted a dog that had a broken bone,” Oksana said. “I really didn’t want another dog, either, because we live in a small apartment where we had two dogs to begin with and we weren’t sure if we could afford him.  But he was such a sweet little dog that we decided to keep him.”

Murray still has some issues that Oksana believes are related to how he was treated before he came into her life. For instance, she said, “in the middle of the night, if he’s sleeping on our bed and you accidently touch him with your foot, he can have a freak-out moment where he starts growling. But usually if you just hold him down, he’s o.k. and he’ll calm down and go right back to sleep.”

“Since we’ve had him, he’s 100 percent better than when we found him. He was about six pounds then. Now he’s about 10.  He wasn’t using his leg for a long time and the muscle had deteriorated so we had to train him to use it again. And now the muscle is slowly coming back.

“He’s a great addition to our family. He’s super sweet and smart and he wants to get petted all the time and he cuddles. He loves playing with our bigger dog and our little girl dog takes care of him like she’s his mom.”

The Animal Health Foundation’s Angel Fund was happy to help pet owners in Los Angeles and Orange Counties afford critical care for their precious furry pets.

The Nelson’s pet Pistol received a grant as a result of the Lomita Pet Hospital

The Portillo’s pet Little Ranger received a grant as a result of the Community Veterinary Hospital, Inc.

The Varela’s pet Diesel received a grant as a result of the Aliso Niguel Animal Hospital

The Hattori’s pet Buddy received a grant as a result of the Crenshaw Animal Hospital

The Meier’s pet Little Bob received a grant as a result of the Mar Vista Animal Medical Center

The Leek’s pet Sheb received a grant as a result of the Beverly Virgin Animal Hospital

The Rodriguez’ pet Teddy received a grant as a result of the Animal Hospital of Huntington Beach

This picture shows Carolyn Davis  and Lazarus and Agatha during Lazarus’s three week check up.

Lazarus had an amazing recovery from his bladder surgery despite his anemia and  his liver issues.

But our concern with today’s physical exma on his three week recheck and suture removal

Is that he is experinecing some neurologic issues. This may be related to his liver’s inability to

Digest proteins in his diet. Last week this happened and Carolyn lowered the protein in his food

and Lazaarus improved. But it only took a little bit of fish protein in his diet this morning to bring

on the neuologic symptoms again. We are watching Lazarus closely with hope in our hearts!

How many more times can Lazarus defy the odds?

Lazarus was well named by Carolyn Davis. She adopted him the day before he was to be put down as an unwanted stray at a pound. Lazarus has turned into my most miraculous patient because he escaped death from three terminal diseases.

In 2008, when Lazarus was eight years old, he developed stage five terminal leukemia. At presentation, Lazarus had been vomiting blood and had a white blood cell count (WBC) of 659,500! The WBC normal  ranges from 6,000-18,000. He was at end stage crisis from Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. His overall prognosis was poor (less than 4 months). Carolyn would not allow a bone marrow biopsy because she did not want the risk since he was so sick (risk:benefit ratio).

We entered Lazarus into our Pawspice program. Pawspice rhymes with hospice but it is much much more! Pawspice embraces palliative medicine (reduces the signs and discomfort of illness) and offers kinder gentler standard chemotherapy. Lazarus’ chances for a long life were grim but Carolyn felt that as long as he did not feel sick from the treatments, she wanted us to try to save him.  She said, “I want to save him. I want him to be the miracle dog!”  Lazarus responded to the gentle chemotherapy and he survived stage five leukemia!

Two years later in 2010, Lazarus was swimming in Lake Arrowhead. He developed a severe infection of his liver (hepatitis). The infection concentrated in the tiny pathways of his bile system. Lazarus developed  yellow jaundice of his skin. He he had bloody small bowel diarrhea and extremely elevated liver enzymes. His liver biopsy diagnosed hepatitis with an infected biliary system  (suppurative cholangiohepatitis).

Rcently, Lazarus started having blood in his urine. When we checked his bladder, we found a large tumor involving the apex of his bladder. We tried to control the bleeding with an infusion into his bladder. Despite our efforts, his urine continued to be bloody. It became obvious to all of us, especially to his mom, Carolyn, that Lazarus would need surgery to remove his bleeding bladder tumor. There was no other feasible alternative. Despite the risk, surgery had to be done because Lazaruswas losing so much blood in one week that he required blood transfusions!

Of course, Carolyn was on board for the surgery. She almost demanded the surgery. We had to remind her that Lazarus had a special pre-existing history and co-morbid conditions. Read about his skirmishes with death in my Lazarus blog of September 24, if you don’t remember Lazarus! He is the miraculous survivor of near-death liver failure, horrible hepatitis and raging acute leukemia. All these factors, including his severe anemia, put Lazarus into the “high surgical risk” category.  I needed Carolyn to understand that Lazarus could die.

Dr. Villalobos founder of Pawspice (rhymes with Hospice) applied and received an Angel Fund Grant from the AHF-SCVMA.  Thank you Dr. Villalobos!

In June, 2011, Kira Davidson’s boyfriend took her to Disneyland for her birthday.  It was a great day – until they returned home and Kira found her dog, Gypsie, shaking and acting “really strange.”

Gypsie, a 4-year-old Manchester terrier Kira had rescued “straight off the street” a year earlier, was “shaky and she’d never been shaky before. I figured that maybe it was because it was colder that night. The next morning, I woke up and I went out to get her some dog food. When I came home, she was excited and jumping like she normally does and we went upstairs. The next thing you know, I turned around and she was falling and tipping over and then she really fell down and I freaked out.

“My first instinct was to feel her heart and I noticed it was very, very, very slow. So I took her to my local veterinarian in Pasadena.  He said there was a heart murmur and it was beyond what he could do because he’s not a heart specialist.”

The veterinarian referred Kira, who lives in Temple City, to the Advanced Veterinary Care Center in Pasadena. Fearing an expensive treatment, Kira – who had been laid off from her job with an insurance company days before – went to a couple of other veterinarians first. She was told the same thing that the first practitioner had said.  So she took Gypsie to Advanced Veterinary Care.

“They were very accommodating and we found out that her heart wasn’t working right and the only way to save her was to put in a pacemaker.”  The hospital filled out forms for an Angel Fund grant to help Kira and AVCC matched the grant.  “So basically they saved us $1,000 on the pacemaker. And within about a week I had found out what was wrong with Gypsie and she was on the surgery table. She has always been a very fit dog. She’s got a lot of muscle, more than fat. So she was the first patient of theirs where they actually had to implant the pacemaker under her muscle, instead of just under her skin. The pacemaker is the exact same thing they put in a person. And it turned out really good. Dr. [Sarah] Zimmerman said she loved the result. She said she wanted to do it that way on more dogs.”

Today, Gypsie is a healthy, normal terrier.  She can keep up with other dogs.  She jumps and runs and plays.  “She’s fit!” Kira says happily.

But her dog would be gone by now, if she had not gotten the pacemaker, Kira believes. And she is delighted to have Gypsie back – just as she was before last June.

The Rodriguez family’s 12 year old pomeranian – Pinky – had bladder, ureteral and kidney stones that had to be removed surgically.  In order for the family to afford the surgery, The Advanced Veterinary Care Center applied for an AHF-SCVMA Angel Fund Grant.  This helped the Rodriguez family save the life of their beloved Pinky!

The Portnoy family thanks the Northridge Pet Hospital for applying for and receiving a grant from AHF-SCVMA’s Angel Fund.  Their domestic shorthair cat – Fifi – had an ulcerated growth between her paw pad and needed attention to several teeth.  Fifi is recovering nicely.

Read how the Angel Fund helped Baby thanks to the Rainbow Vet Hospital

https://www.animalhealthfoundation.net/case-of-the-month/item.html/n/20034

Thanks to the Rainbow Vet Hospital in Burbank for helping Jodi with her Sheltie Bonnie by reaching out to the Angel Fund!

The Green family is very grateful to the Cat Care Clinic and the Angel Fund for helping Peanut recover from a severe urinary tract infection.