Hello all! My name is Cat. My husband and I adopted this sad looking dog that was tied to a tree on a lead across the street from our home. Axel (Chopper than) was under weight, poorly taken cared of and left to his own.
When we took him in the first thing I did was brush him to death….lol He was matted, dirty and had tufts of hair EVERY WHERE. It took me 3 and 1/2 days to get him to even a decent coat.
Than came trying to figure out what he likes to eat. See, Axel was fed scrapped human food (he came to use weighing 44lbs) and husky/malamutes are PICKY. Once we were able to figure it out, it took 2 weeks before he felt comfortable to approach my husband, it seems as though Axel didn’t do well with men.
It than took 2 more weeks before he would think about entering our home. It’s sad, he was so used to being outside that he thought it was a punishment to come inside. Once he got over his fears it was another 2 weeks before he would come upstairs…well he warmed up my heart real quick. You see before we took him in, I had lost my golden retriever to the big “C” word. It took me a LONG time to recoup from losing my pup.
Anyways, the reason I am here today is Axel is my baby boy. We are at a not so fun stage in our life, Axel was just diagnosed with soft tissue sarcoma and our options are NOT awesome. Due to the location of the tumor our options are to spend 3k-7k de -bulking the tumor and giving him radiation, amputate him or put him to sleep (I am not happy with that choice). The reason why I don’t want to amputate him is he also has arthritis in both of his hind legs. At the same time we CANNOT afford to have it de-bulked and radiation either….my heart is breaking!!!
We are not sure how old he is, we were told he is about 8-10 years old, we truly don’t know what is the best option for him… I am hoping this community can help, I don’t want to lose my baby boy, but I don’t want to not give him the best quality of life.
Axel came to us from a very sad situation and we have given him all that we can…..
Axel certainly hit the puppy lottery once you rescued him!! WOW! What a story!
Because of you and your patience, and your love, Axel now knows what joy feels like!! He k ows what happiness feels like! He knows what love feels like!!!!
You are doing everything you can for Axel and that’s all any of us can do with this piece of crap disease!!
I see you have another follow-up blog post so I’m hopping over there.
Oh, and we would looooove to see pics of your boy!
Lots of hugs!
Sally and Alumni Happy Hannah and Merry Myrtle and Frankie too!
Awww. Axel’s life started out exactly like our Wyatt Ray, who lost his leg to that darn tether. I’m glad Axel found you before the same thing happened. He’s a very lucky dawg to have such great people.
My first question is: have you gotten multiple opinions? MANY people’s dogs at Tripawds have been able to have an amputation after another vet, sometimes even a third, took another look at their arthritis situation.
I encourage you to visit our Discussion Forums and ask for support. Lots of folks are ready to help OK?
Please let us know what we can do. We’re here for you and sweet Axel.