CORTLANDT, N.Y. (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) -- The staff at a Westchester County veterinary clinic stepped in to save a puppy who was set to be euthanized because of a medical condition, but a GoFundMe campaign they set up hasn't yet reached a goal for surgery.
When the owner of Maverick brought the pup to Peekskill-Cortlandt Veterinary Hospital in Cortlandt, veterinarians found a rare heart abnormality preventing the 8-week-old German Shepherd from digesting food.
A major heart surgery for the condition, persistent right aortic arch, would cost $10,000.
“That’s something he just couldn’t afford, so he was going to unfortunately put him to sleep,” practice manager Jillian Santana said.
The staff couldn’t let that happen, Santana said, so they adopted Maverick and set up a GoFundMe page to raise the money for the surgery.
“You see some animals, you see it in their eyes—okay, they’ve checked out, it’s their time,” she said. “But not him, he’s definitely got that look in his eye that he just wants to keep going.”
“We just decided that it wasn’t his time to be put to sleep,” she said.
In a matter of days, the GoFundMe raised the $10,000 needed for the surgery.
However, after a setback over the weekend, Maverick will now need a feeding tube. Staff said he has stopped gaining weight and has become weak. If he doesn’t keep growing, he won’t be a good candidate to survive the surgery, they said.
The clinic now needs to raise a total of $14,000 for the feeding tube procedure.
Once Maverick has healed, Santana said the clinic will put him up for adoption to a good family.
“Our goal is to make him happy and adopt him to a family that will continue to take care of him,” she said.
Maverick is playful and rambunctious like any other puppy.
“He wants to keep going,” Santana said. “He definitely has his favorites—certain people who feed him. He’ll follow them around all day. So he definitely has us wrapped around his little paw, that’s for sure.”
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