How Facebook Helped Me Save My Dog
I'm always talking about how Facebook is such an awesome resource tool for me. I ask for advice and referrals and get some of the best feedback. Like our doctors. I have an awesome story about that but will save it for later. My favorite story is about my dog.
One day I came home from work and my sweet 5 year old yellow lab, Sammy, seemed deathly sick. We were unsure what happened. She was home with my husband and young kids all day. They didn’t see her get into anything to make her ill, but after a trip to the vet and then the ER we learned that she was dying. If we did not get her the surgery she needed to find out what exactly was wrong she would pass that night. All the doctors could tell us was that her levels were out of whack and it was killing her. Sammy was otherwise a perfectly healthy dog.
We got Sammy when I was pregnant with my first child. Sammy and my son were very close. With my son’s 5th birthday was approaching the following week it made things that much tougher. My husband and I had to decide at what dollar amount would we decide to go ahead with the surgery or put her down. The doctors estimated $2,500 but without knowing exactly what was wrong with Sammy that number could change. Once the doctor gave us their estimate I had about 10 minutes to decided what to do.
It was now midnight so I was exhausted, all I could think about was my son and what a horrible morning it would be to tell him his best friend had passed. What a sad 5th birthday it would be for him. Those ten minutes seemed to be a life time but my heart took over and I made the decision to move forward with the surgery. At this point I didn’t care about the money.
I kept thinking about how Sammy was a member of our family, actually the first member of our family since my husband and I got married. At this point is is now 6am the next morning and we received a call that the surgery was successful and Sammy was going to be okay. Phew! Amazing sense of relief!
Turns out that she had ruptured her bladder and the urine in her body was what was killing her. The bad news was that the tear was so bad she was going to have to stay in the hospital for an entire week! The bill reached $8,000! My first thought was “I have to do something to pay this off or my husband will never forgive me!”
A week later I decided to host a garage sale. I posted this story on Facebook and announced that I was going to host a garage sale to raise the money to help pay this huge bill. I was completely overwhelmed with the response. I was receiving $100 checks in the mail from complete strangers. People I never met before were donating furniture and brand new equipment they never used. We had to clean out our entire 3-car garage to make room for all the donated items. It was absolutely amazing!
The morning of the garage sale strangers showed up at 5am to help me put everything out. That Sunday, after 2 full days I could not believe it. We had raised over $4,000! It all started from one Facebook post.
I took pictures of the donated items and made an album on Facebook which was constantly being updated and shared by all my friends. All thanks to Facebook my story spread like wildfire! I learned there are a LOT of dog lovers out there and they saw my story on Facebook, reached to me and made a huge impact. Once again, thank you Facebook for saving Sammy - and my marriage!
Thank you for reading my story about Facebook saving Sammy! If you enjoyed this story please share with your friends and feel free to share your story with us.