Update: Leia is home and recuperating- thank you to all that donated. You can follow her progress at @golden.girls20 on Facebook.
Leia was involved in an accident on Sunday September 22, 2019. She darted out of our back yard after a rabbit and ran into a quickly passing vehicle at the fastest speed she could achieve. After being knocked unconscious and being brought to the vet by our family, who, thankfully, were outside at the time of the accident because the driver sped off in the other direction after acknowledging that our sweet dog was injured. We were referred from one emergency vet to another (starting with a vet called Webster Groves Animal Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, then traveling to a vet called Veterinary Specialty Services nearby) we were finally rushed back to our vehicle and told to get our sweet Leia to the University of Missouri Veterinary Health Center in Columbia, Missouri, nearly two hours away, where she could see the only Veterinary Neurologists for several states around. Thankfully, the staff was accommodating, and after giving the veterinary technicians the okay to work on our baby they began working on a treatment plan. This plan involved extensive imaging, both CT scans and MRIs in order to assess the damage affecting our Leia, and then potential corrective surgery, and we were quoted between $5,000 and $10,000 for the following procedures. In the following days the scans were done to find that there was in fact a fracture in Leia’s C2 cervical vertebra, and that it essentially needed to be fused to cervical vertebrae C1 and C3 using 8 screws and bone cement. We are now in search of assistance with the other $4,000 in charges following Leia’s successful life-saving surgery. Leia is currently under the supervision of a neurology department at the University of Missouri Veterinary Health Center, under the watchful eye of her surgeon Joseph Kowal, DVM.
Leia is on her way to a long road of recovery with upwards of 6,000 to $8,000 in veterinary bills that need to be covered, but our “bionic puppy”, is worth more than her weight in gold.