Our mission is to help provide the financial support to get them over the finish line.
We will help offset the cost of specialty care to give them the best chance for recovery.

Lucky Paw Foundation Newsletter - October 21, 2024


HELLO FROM THE LUCKY PAW FOUNDATION. WE HAD AN EXCITING SUMMER!

Dear Friends of the Lucky Paw Foundation,


Hello from the Lucky Paw Foundation. We’ve had a very exciting summer. As we head into fall, I wanted to recap a little of the summer’s events for all of our supporters, so that you would not miss anything.

Earlier in May, we helped Tucker overcome some pretty big challenges. Then he and his Mom helped the Lucky Paw Foundation by being the star of our Fundraising Show at the Lyric in Harbor Springs. We created a special video presentation with the help of Roger Tallman and the Creative i team in Petoskey. It highlighted what it meant to be a Lucky Paw Foundation recipient. We also received some generous support by singer/songwriter Jordon Frank who allowed us to use his song, “Chasing Butterflies” in our video. In addition, Roger wrote original music and Jordon graciously agreed to perform it for the end of our video. The event was a great success.  We raised nearly $50,000!


Specialty life-saving veterinary care is increasingly becoming unaffordable to many people. The support we received this summer was incredible and will go a long way to help animals in our community. We are starting to see more and more families commit to $6-7,000 to treat their pet, only to be told it's still not enough. Your support will help them with the “just a couple thousand dollars more” moments that can literally crush their opportunity for treatment. A great big thank you to everyone who has supported our recipients over the past 2 1/2 years. Thus far we have helped 11 animals and every one of them, despite facing serious difficulties, have made full recoveries.


Last but not least, our newest Lucky Paw Foundation recipient is Bo. His story is shared in this newsletter. He’s a great little dog that has had a great attitude throughout his journey. I hope you enjoy his story.


Gratefully,

Tracy Dulak, Director

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS

 

  • You can find Jordon Frank's original “Chasing Butterflies” video on YouTube. He wrote this song in memory of his sweet rescue dog Keys who died of Lymphoma.
  • Sulli, one of our Lucky Paw recipients, has decided to “pay it forward” by using his good looks and charm. He and his sister Maggi have been selected to appear in a fundraising calendar for Senior Houndsabound - a senior rescue home for Beagles and Basset Hounds. If you are interested in a calendar, you can order from seniorhoundsabound.org. They will be the face of April 2025. So proud!
  • Special Thanks to Lauretta Reiss and the Small Batch Team in Harbor Springs. They made all of the delicious and beautiful paw print cookies for the summer fundraiser. They were almost too pretty to eat. But we did anyway.
  • Big, Big Thank you to Scott Langton and the Lyric Theatre Team in Harbor Springs who hosted our summer fundraising event. They created graphics and an unbelievably unique event.   


Meet Bo


Bo is an 11 year old, super sweet boy. He works hard by often accompanying his owner to work as a greeter. Over the past 6 months, Bo seemed to be slowing down. His owner thought maybe it was just his age. But, when he took him to the vet he found out that it

was not “old age” it was hyperparathyroid disease. His parathyroid gland had grown inappropriately causing his blood calcium levels to be sky high. In addition, the chronic elevation of blood calcium started to damage his kidneys. He was hospitalized locally for about 5 days where he was stabilized. He needed specialty surgery to remove the abnormal parathyroid gland. However, there was an additional problem of the kidney disease.  Every time he got off of the IV fluids, his calcium levels and kidney levels went right back up. This presented a scary dilemma.


Bo needed surgery to “fix” the underlying problem, but there was no guarantee that his kidneys would recover. The Internal Medicine Specialist said there was an 80% chance that the kidneys would recover after surgery, but it was not guaranteed. There was a 20% chance that his owner would spend about $6500 (in addition to the cost of 5 days at the local vet) and Bo would go into kidney failure. Tough decision!


But, Bo’s enthusiasm and positive attitude never faltered throughout the process making it

a little easier for his owner to say, “yes, he would take that chance.”

Fast forward to making the appointment at the specialist’s office. Specialist’s are generally booked out 1-2 months. Getting them in on an urgent appointment generally involves going in through emergency and then transferring them to the requested specialist. Bo could not thrive without being on IV fluids. He needed to get his surgery as soon as possible, once he was removed from the IV.  It was imperative that Bo go through emergency to get the urgent specialist’s care that he needed. The emergency doctor told us to expect an additional $2-3,000 cost for ONE day in emergency. 


Owner’s have to think long and hard about the estimate presented to them. They consider the patient’s age, likelihood of survival and how much money they can afford, among other things. When you finally make the difficult decision that you’re all in with the expected cost, it's a low-blow when a few thousand dollars are just tacked on to the estimate. It just adds to the stress and angst of the decision. Well, this is exactly where Lucky Paw Foundation is designed to help. We offered to pay for the additional emergency bill to ensure that Bo could make

it to the specialist and get his chance to survive. And that he did. Surgery went well and I am happy to report that his kidney values went back to normal within 3 weeks. Hooray! His owner knew that he could do it and he was right!


His system is slowly recovering and learning to regulate his calcium levels again.  It should not be long before he makes a full recovery and

is off all of his medication. Through it all, he was wagging his tail and appears to be back to his usual energetic and gregarious self! 

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