I couldn't believe I was pregnant. My SO and I had just agreed to stop trying and let fate take over, sure enough within a month I was pregnant. I was over the moon... happy, excited and truthfully a tad bit terrified.

Back track a few weeks before I found out I was pregnant: my pit bull, maverick, started acting very strange. He kept jumping on the bed at night and nudging my stomach or resting his head on it. Or I would be standing in the kitchen making dinner and being the horrendous beggar that he is, I looked over and sure enough he was standing right next to me but not looking me in the face but staring at my stomach. Now I'm not usually one to believe outrageous things, but the minute I got my BFP, I felt it in my bones that maverick knew I was pregnant way before I did.

Maverick has basically been my child and main responsibility for 6 years, when I rescued him from the pound and he was to be euthanized in 24 hours. The sign said "aggressive dog, don't stare him in the eyes." So what do I do? Stare at him, of course. And he came right up to the front of the cage, leaned up against it, and let me rub him. Aggressive dog my ass. I fell in love with him instantly and knew I needed to bring him home. Over the years maverick has shown absolute love for children, wanting nothing more than to lick them all over and smell them. I was over the moon excited to be able to bring our own little newborn into our family and have maverick smother it with love. My SO and I discussed how we would make our pregnancy announcement and maverick was to be front and center, because even though we were creating a new life, he was still number one in ours.

About a month after I found out i was pregnant, maverick started acting strange again. Except this time it had nothing to do with me and the little life growing inside me. He began to become "slow and stiff" was the way I like to describe it. He had a hard time getting on the bed, a hard time walking up the stairs. I figured he played rough with my SO outside with the ball and maybe slipped and was sore. He was stiff for awhile but I'm no physical pain from what I could tell. I would lay him down and stretch out his legs and rub his lower back, to see if that helped loosen him up a bit. Within days he was yelping in pain every time he moved. We took him to our vet immediately, who said that he had pulled his back muscles and to give him some anti inflammatory meds. The meds seemed to be working because about three days later he was the same crazy dog I knew before, running up the stairs and doing his excited booty shake when it was dinner time. About two days later, I heard him scream out in pain and wouldn't put any pressure on his back legs. We rushed him back into the vet where I demanded x-rays and that's when my whole world came crashing down.

They found a mass underneath his spine and confirmed that maverick did not in fact pull out his back muscles but that they feared he had a very rare form of Bone Cancer but that they wouldn't be sure until more extensive scans and tests were given.

My SO and I have been trying to raise our credit so that we could buy a new house and get out of renting. We had a small joint savings account, that each of us would transfer money into every time we got paid to use for credit card bills, my student loans and our auto loans. We ended up emptying out our entire savings account to pay for the more extensive tests because I wasn't just going to throw my hands up in the air and give up on him. Would I do that with my own child that I birthed into this world? Absolutely not.

So we did it: CT scans, MRI's, x-rays in different angles and various blood work to see if there was a chance of this cancer being anywhere else in his body and if it was starting to shut down any of his internal organs. We also made sure to get him on the right pain medication so his days were not spent in misery while we fought for a miracle. Each test he had to be put under. Although my boy is sweet, he can be very weary of strangers, especially the ones that are touching him in places that are painful and they couldn't get accurate readings if he was moving in the slightest. He still had so much life in him and i was not ready to give up on him before I did everything I could to give him a fighting chance.

After all of that, our maverick was confirmed and diagnosed with aggressive osteosarcoma, AKA aggressive bone cancer in a place that is so incredibly rare that they have never seen it before. Bone cancer usually resides in a dogs limbs and if it is in the spine, it's usually on top. Not the case for our maverick. His tumor is underneath his spine, not operable and multiple vets told me they would not operate for the simple fact that one wrong move and he would be paralyzed forever, even if they could get rid of the entire tumor.

We know now that we are going to need to say goodbye to him very soon. I feel like a horrible dog mom, for the simple fact that there really is absolutely nothing I can do for him. There are cancer treatments available of course, but we spent all savings on tests, scans and medicine. I have no more funds to continue his fight. We only have enough to keep him comfortable until we can afford to have him euthanized. Unfortunately, vets even charge you for having to say goodbye to your , much like funeral parlors for humans.

My mother in law recently made a gofundme page for our sweet to help make the rest of his short time with us as comfortable, pain free and easy as it can be before it's time to let him go. Also, to help me and my SO get back on our feet after we have to say goodbye to our first real child. I never ask for help financially, I am much too prideful, but it never hurts to ask for support from others. I have written down the link for the gofundme page my mother in law has created, I don't think you can click on it and have it will immediately take you to the page, you need to copy and paste it into your browser. I haven't quite figured out how to copy links onto <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glow.android.nurture">nurture</a> just yet.

I post this here in hopes that you will hear our story, hug your fur babies close and love them with all that you have inside of you. ❤️

Page: https://www.gofundme.com/maverickcance

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