Stories
Meet Sonny: Our Brave and Loving Pittie Mix
Sonny is an 8-month-old pittie mix with the kindest spirit and an incredibly tolerant nature. We rescued Sonny to be a companion and playmate for our 3-year-old pittie, MayBelle. From the moment they met, MayBelle knew that Sonny needed gentleness and love, and they quickly became inseparable friends.
When we first brought Sonny home, we believed he had an autoimmune disorder affecting his joints and hoped he would outgrow it to live a healthy life. However, after a severe joint bleed that nearly cost him his life, we discovered that Sonny was actually suffering from hemophilia A. By then, Sonny had already stolen our hearts, and we entrusted his care to the amazing team at PASE in Philly, who saved his life and helped us develop a plan to manage his disease.
Despite our best efforts, Sonny experienced another major bleed, this time in his chest. The outlook was grim, but Sonny’s charm and resilience, which we call “the Sonny effect,” won over everyone at PASE, and they saved his life once again.
Sonny is truly special, embodying pure love and joy even on the toughest days. Some days he needs complete rest and assistance walking, while other days he is eager to play like any other puppy, even though we have to find safe ways for him to expend his energy. Despite his limitations, Sonny has the best personality. He is sweet and cuddly, spunky and curious, persistent, and has the world’s best head tilt!
We know that our dogs’ lives are never long enough, but we hope that with the help of veterinary research and clinical trials, Sonny and his fellow hemophiliac friends can enjoy lives filled with the freedom to play, roam, chew, jump, run, wrestle, chase baseballs, and do all the things that fill their dreams.
This is our gorgeous boy Tommy who will be 2 this October!
We got Tommy at 9 weeks old, three days before Christmas. He was a normal little puppy and full of life (even crazier now!).
We have two cats, who weren’t very keen on Tommy at first, and one of them scratched his ear. It bled for ages and we brought him to the vet who bandaged him up and said ears bleed a lot so no real concern.
Then, when he was teething he used to bleed excessively. He would fall asleep and wake up in a little pool of blood under him. Since he was our first puppy we thought this was normal at first. But it continued for a few days and we took him to the vet, who referred us to UCD vet hospital in Dublin, Ireland.
They kept him overnight and did tests on him and he was diagnosed with Hemophilia A,. We weren’t told much just that if he had a bad bleed he would need plasma.
Where we live in Ireland, vets don’t have any access to cryoprecipitate or plasma, so if he has a significant bleed the only supply of is hours away in Dublin. Our vets told us there is no treatment, meds anything available and just to hope he doesn’t bleed out before we get him help!
We love him so much and he is such a happy boy. We hope we can someday access gene therapy for him so he can live a long, happy life, free of the painful joint bleeding that he currently battles from time to time.
Ivar was surrendered to me by his breeder as a 4 month old puppy…
…who had lost mobility in his rear end and was not responding to medication or laser therapy as I worked with our local English Bulldog Rescue. I offered to foster since the veterinary clinic I work for has an orthopedic surgeon. Despite being covered in urine scald and burns from his previous laser treatment, he was the happiest, most outgoing puppy. He continued to have occasional joint swelling and be non-ambulatory. Radiographs and routine lab work results were inconclusive. He as given hyperbaric oxygen treatment for the swelling with no results. After a visit to a neurologist, additional testing and an MRI were recommended. While waiting for this appointment, he continued to be non-ambulatory and have random joint swelling. Then a few days later we noticed an excessive amount of blood in his kennel after he had been playing. The only thing found was a baby tooth. Suspecting a bleeding disorder, an in house pt/aPTT was run and a sample sent to Cornell for testing which confirmed Hemophilia A.
So little is currently studied about dogs with Hemophilia, that Ivar was given a guarded 6 month prognosis and spent the next several weeks completing a bucket list of fun puppy activities. 5 ½ years later, he’s defying the odds and living his best life. He has needed two transfusions of Cryoprecipitate for major bleeds. He has also had numerous small bleeds, some random and others caused by his zest for life and his no fear attitude. After his first transfusion of Cryoprecipitate at just one year old, he stood up and walked and has been mobile ever since. We are hoping for many more years to come.
We got Vini when he was three months old.
We first noticed something was off when he would not put pressure on specific legs, but the vet would prescribe medication, and it would get better. He also bled a lot when he was teething.
The big bleed which led to his diagnosis took place when he was about a year old. He developed a mass under his tongue, and the emergency vet performed surgery. They had no idea what the mass was. He was not healing from the surgery. He stayed at the emergency vet for three weeks and had three blood transfusions. They could not figure out why he was not healing. One of the vets thought maybe he had a bleeding disorder and asked us if he wanted to test to see. Well, the test came back positive for hemophilia. They got information from Cornell and said we could give him cryoprecipitate and see if that helps. He started getting better with the cryoprecipitate! He came home with a feeding tube, and it took a couple of weeks of home care and a few rounds of cryoprecipitate before we felt like he would make it. The vet told us he would probably not live to see five and give him the best life we can in the short time that we have him.
Vini has lived for over 11 years. He will be 12 in October. Vini has had a lot of bleeds over the years. We always keep multiple bags of cryoprecipitate in the freezer. We have had to completely adjust our lives and spend a lot of money to care for him, but he is worth it, and I am thankful for every day I get to spend with him. He is the best dog in the world and makes our lives whole.
Walter was dropped off to a rural shelter in Nebraska…
…on a busy Saturday in early 2022, in a box, with a little Japanese Chin friend. No information was left about them. He was vetted by the shelter vet and when he was neutered he had bleeding complications. Out in rural NE he wasn’t able to be provided with any blood products, but somehow survived that surgery and was in recovery for 6 weeks. The shelter had put a teaser photo up of the pair of dogs prior to them being adoptable and since I had been looking for another Japanese Chin I called them and got approved to go meet them that weekend. They both came home with me the weekend of Easter in 2022 with a warning that “he bled a lot and it was weird.” In August of 2022 Walter presented at bedtime painful with fluid on his rib cage. Having worked around animals and dogs for over a decade I knew something wasn’t right and took him to urgent care.
That began our adventure of discovering that Walter had Hemophilia. He’s since had four additional bleed events and has also had a few seizures. We’re not sure how the seizures fit into this picture, but we’re hopeful that maybe they’ll go away after he’s able to have Gene Therapy. Walter is now three years old. His two best friends at home are Fiona (his Japanese Chin buddy) and Becca (a 60 pound lab/pit mix). Walter loves playing with his sisters and I look forward to the day that I don’t have to be the fun police and end playtime when the be-bopping off the furniture gets too intense.
Roland’s Story
Jack and I stared helplessly into the oxygen chamber where Roland tried his hardest to breathe. He was still fighting, but the light in his eyes was dimming. Over 60% of the blood in his body was pooled in his lungs. Even if they were able to save him, something like this could happen again in a week. He was still just a puppy, and was only a month away from his first birthday. He’d already been through so much, and this third trip to the ER was not boding well. “He won’t feel anything or know what’s going on, I promise,” said the vet, who had been very familiar with Roland’s case. “He’s just been dealt a really unlucky hand.” My Dad had just pulled in, his eyes teary, to come and say his goodbyes. We all sobbed. I knew it was time, but Jack didn’t think we were clear-headed enough to make the decision. I agreed. Besides, it was a Sunday and I had no way to reach our primary vet who was so invested in Roland and his condition. I sent an email to the office, but hadn’t heard back yet. “I can’t make this decision without talking to Dr. Revel. I owe it to her.” So we told them to go ahead and drain Roland’s lungs…
When my boyfriend Jack and I welcomed a new puppy, it was love at first sight. He was crate trained within weeks, loved to snuggle, and had the most incredible temperament. Roland brought Jack and I even closer together – and not just because we named him after the Roland Garros tennis tournament, a sport that we had bonded over being superfans when we first met. Besides the limps that Roland got every few weeks (which we chalked up to growing pains) and the relatively excessive bleeding when he lost his baby teeth (which made him look like a vampire for weeks on end), Roland seemed to be pretty normal. After a quick visit to the vet to make sure one of his limps wasn’t anything to worry about, the vet on the team who saw him that day and hadn’t met him before made a point to personally come tell me “you have a really special dog.” Little did we all know what that really meant. Everything changed the day Roland went in to get neutered.
I dropped him off early in the morning and was expecting to pick him up midday. That’s when I got a call from Dr. Revel. She said she needed to put Roland back under anesthesia so she could go back in and re-sitch him up because his wound kept bleeding. When I was finally able to pick him up, she warned me that the bruising was bad. She also drew some blood for additional testing just to be safe, told us to monitor the wound carefully, and to let her know if there was more bleeding the next day. The next morning, there was a hefty amount of blood that had pooled in his crate. I called Dr. Revel and she picked up immediately. “I was just about to call you.” She had already gotten the blood work back and after doing some research had a hunch Roland had hemophilia– a rare blood disorder in which he lacked a critical clotting agent.
We immediately took him in for a transfusion, and for the next six weeks, we nursed Roland back to health. We set up our terrace with grass for him to do his business and administered a complicated medicine schedule. This included putting cream on his scrotum every few hours and lubricating his penis which kept drying out because he wasn’t able to groom it – not things I saw coming when I signed up to get a dog. But he still found ways to aggravate the wound by dragging his behind on the ground and using the cone, which only aggravated it more. The first morning that Roland woke us up with a bark was one of the happiest days since we got him. He was back, and we could start resuming our usual routines, albeit with a lot more caution.
The ER had told us that we should be treating him like a glass animal. At the same time, before this incident, Roland was going to the park, playing with other dogs, and chasing tennis balls. We were optimistic– we just had to keep an extra eye on him and bring him in to get a transfusion if he ever got a cut or something. It seemed reasonable enough.
But just a few weeks later, days before the winter holidays, Roland became lethargic and was breathing heavily. I soon discovered that the entire area under his tongue was swollen, and he was struggling to eat or open his mouth. So off to the ER we went. Roland punctured his mouth somewhere under his tongue. It kept swelling and they were worried it would soon close up his airway. He soon also wasn’t able to eat or drink on his own. This is when both the ER and various family members started to weigh in on the long-term viability of keeping Roland alive. If these incidents were to keep occuring, would it be fair for Roland to suffer? Was it fair for me and Jack to be constantly worried? And that didn’t even touch upon the costs involved of keeping Roland alive. I must have had a premonition of some sort because before I got Roland, I purchased him a health insurance plan that covers 90% of his medical bills with a very low deductible. Each of these ER visits were nearing $10,000 apiece – with Roland quickly racking up over 20 nights in the ER – and wasn’t something we would be able to otherwise afford.
Besides the neuter, which was elective, this was the first serious incident. We savored every moment Roland was healthy, and we tried to maximize each day he felt good. This included resuming training, which was tricky given that we could go weeks without reinforcing what he learned because of him being ill. And when he was fit, we would find ourselves being lenient with him because we felt badly for him and his condition. Everyone has a special bond with their dog, but I don’t have the words to describe the connection we have developed with Roland. It’s like he knows what he’s been through and that we’ve been there for him. The way he looks at us when he’s not feeling well, and the forlorn eyes he gives us when he is whisked away at the ER are so piercing.
There weren’t many good days before the next incident. Here we were, less than a week after Roland had fully recovered (minus full mobility of his tongue), back at the ER with his lungs full of blood, helplessly staring at him in the oxygen chamber. As we got home after deciding not to put him down, we got a call from Dr. Revel, who apparently checks the office email on Sundays. We told her what they wanted us to do but that we couldn’t make that decision without her. At this point, there had been mention of an experimental gene therapy trial that was conducted almost a decade ago that proved highly successful on dogs with Hemophilia A. Unfortunately, the ER vets told us that they had inquired about the study and that it was fully closed and completed. But Dr. Revel said she would reach out to them herself.
A multiple months-long journey of getting this study approved had begun. While we were excited and cautiously optimistic, we couldn’t help but feel some extra stress knowing that while there was potentially a light at the end of the tunnel, something could happen to Roland at any moment. During these months, we lost two of the dogs who were intended to be in the study – one of them not even three years old. The thought of losing Roland so close to the finish line was a terrifying thought.
As we push through the final steps of this path forward, all we have left to do is secure grants and fundraise so that we can save as many hemophiliac dogs as we can. This whole journey has been one of the craziest things I’ve ever been through, and Roland’s story is hopefully just beginning. I didn’t sign up for this – I thought I was getting a healthy puppy. But everything happens for a reason and I truly believe Roland was meant to come home with us. I wouldn’t change anything. He’s taught me so much about resilience, and I’ve learned how to be more calm when things get hard. Life is full of ups and downs, and Roland has helped prepare me for what’s to come. I’m so grateful to everyone involved for their dedication to save Roland and his friends. Let’s get this over the finish line.
