Support All Paws and Help Raise the Funds for Xander's Hip Repacement

Xander is a 5 year old male Great Pyrenees who was found cowering on the side of a busy highway.  Despite an extensive search for his owners, his family was never located.  He came into rescue HW positive, emaciated, with an old injury to his right back leg and a growth in the bone of his left front leg that we believed to be osteosarcoma.  He has been in rescue for over a year, is now heart worm free, and as it turns out the growth in the bone is not cancer.  It's an old fracture that has developed a benign tumor, and we're guessing it probably occurred at the same time as the hip injury.

Xander does have some personality quirks, and we believe they may be related to the old injury.  You see, the long bone in his right back leg was snapped literally in half at some point in his life (likely he was hit by a car), and it healed out of place.  For a while he seemed to be fine with it, and we adopted the keep an eye on it plan.  We didn't want to put him through unneccesary surgery and additional pain.  But earlier this year, he seemed to have aggravated it, and was having a hard time getting around.  In March of this year, we took him to our orthopedic vet, who recommended surgery.  Doc went in and cleaned up, repositioned and pinned and plated the bone back into it's proper place.  

The diagnostics and surgery were a little over $3000, and for the first couple of weeks things seemed to be going fine.  Then Xander stopped using the leg, so we went back to our regular vet for x-rays.  What had started out great went horribly wrong.  Changes in circulation from surgery caused the femoral head to degenerate, and the surgery had failed.  We went back to see our ortho vet with the new x-rays to discuss options.  

Xander is a 115 pound dog, so amputation is clearly not on the table.  We could do a Femoral Head Ostectomy, but with his size and weight that would also not be well-advised.  So the decision was made at that time that the best option for him to lead a normal, pain-free life would be to do a hip replacement.  He is scheduled for surgery July 23.  Dr. Dew wanted to wait 12 weeks to allow circulation to return to normal and everything to completely heal from the previous surgery.  The removal of hardware from the previous surgery, and then the hip replacement itself, will total right at $6000, and this is just out of reach for us.  We've had a very expensive year on the rescue front, with many heart worm positive dogs and several other orthopedic issues, among other things, and funds are depleted.  So we are doing this t-shirt fundraiser to help offset some of the costs for his surgery.  We paid for his last surgery with a personal credit card, and are just not able to do that this time.  So we're offering you something in return for helping Xander!  His picture is featured on the front of the shirt.

Due to his age and personality, Xander will be adopted by his foster family and will live out his life with them.  But we want to be able to make it a pain free life.  This boy has conquered so much.  Can you find it in your heart to help us help him over this last mountain?