A Royal Life Impacted By Your Support 04/26/2024 By Kerry S Meet Royalty Our Phoenix Fund program allows us to take in special needs animals who require extra medical care like Royalty. A337822 was her number. She came into Minneapolis Animal Care and Control as a stray on March 19, 2021. She was underweight, scared, and very nervous. The shelter named her “Royalty.” She was just one year old and had a lot of life ahead of her, but due to her shyness and nervousness, she was not eligible for adoption through the shelter. Royalty was microchipped but despite notifying the owners they never contacted the shelter or attempted to reclaim her. She would need rescue placement into foster care so she could build confidence and trust. This is where Pet Haven stepped in and when we brought her into foster care we learned more about her. Royalty had a broken heart. She needed a community to help her heal it. Royalty’s heart is broken NOT because she ended up in a shelter and was labeled “unadoptable.” Not because her owners didn’t claim her. Not because she was undersocialized and fearful trying to avoid all contact with people as a result. Not because she did not know what home or love was……she does know home and love in her Pet Haven Foster home. Royalty’s heart is broken because she has a congenital heart defect. She has lived the first year and a half of her life with no one knowing until she collapsed and was taken to VCA Feist Animal Hospital. There we found out her chest was filled with fluid. She needed a chest tap and an ultrasound which showed something was wrong with her heart. wound from chest tap. She would need an echocardiogram to see exactly how her heart was broken which the University of Minnesota Veterinary Hospital helped us get. What we found out broke our hearts too…… Royalty had a defect in the left valve of her heart and the valve is too tight. And because of this, her left valve is not pumping properly and her heart cannot pump the blood properly and it backs up into her lungs. The pressure increases and causes fluid to build up in her lungs and chest. As a result of this, the right side of the heart is working too hard and being damaged as well. This is not good for the heart long term. She will not survive. Her time was short. She needed a balloon valvuloplasty. She needed it fast. The University of Minnesota Veterinary Hospital made room in its very tight schedule to get Royalty in for the life-saving procedure she needed, a balloon valvuloplasty. We would need help with funding. The procedure could cost between $4000 – $5000. The University of Minnesota Veterinary Grants Program helped us with funding. We are very grateful to them. We believe Royalty’s life has value. We believe she deserves the chance to know love and a family of her own. We have watched her blossom in foster care, gain confidence, learn to trust, start to play, get the zoomies, and we didn’t want to see that cut short. We wanted to give Royalty a chance at a long life. Because of the generosity of our community, VCA Feist, the U of M, and the Phoenix fund, we were able to provide Royalty with this life-saving procedure. We are thrilled to report Royalty is recovering nicely! Team Royalty at the U strongly expected her to have good results, but she achieved even better results than expected! Below is an excerpt from the surgery report: The average reduction in the pressure gradient with balloon valvuloplasty is reported to be Approximately 50-60%, which is considered a procedural success. In Royalty’s case, we were able to decrease the pressure gradient by over 100%, which is wonderful! Royalty’s original pressure gradient was 242 mmHg, and the pressure gradient following surgery was 20 mmHg. We were hopeful that with time, the thickening to the right ventricle would decrease, the elevated right-sided pressures would come down, and right heart function would improve– therefore decreasing her risk for right congestive heart failure and pleural effusion. Unfortunately, we lost Royalty, but the time she had was full of love and joy, and she was surrounded by family. We are grateful to have given Royalty a chance at life. Please consider a gift to our Phoenix Fund to help dogs like Royalty have a chance at life for as long as they can.
