By Taylor Boyd
The life of a family’s pet was saved, thanks to donations from the community.
Sarah Boyd said she took her family’s puppy, Pocket, to the vet after it became ill the weekend before. “They had to keep her overnight for the four days hooked to IVs because she was just really bad, and they found out it was parvo,” she said.
Boyd, a Patrick County native who moved to Franklin County five years ago, said her family didn’t have the funds to treat parvo, a highly contagious and potentially deadly virus for dogs.
“I made a Facebook post to try and get others help, and the vet said everyday people were donating. On Sunday morning they wanted to do a blood transfusion for plasma, and they wanted money upfront. I told them I would have to wait and see if we could get some together, and then they called me Sunday evening and said people had donated enough to give her that,” Boyd said.
The donations continued until Pocket had improved enough to come home the next Tuesday.
“It’s like an hour and ten-minute drive to the vet,” Boyd said, and explained that about 30 minutes until her arrival, “the vet had told me that everything had been paid in full.”
She said when she left the house, she was expecting to pay more than $2,000 for the remaining vet bill, but she only paid $11 for Pocket’s medication.
“It was like $1,900” was “donated anonymously,” Boyd said of the unexpected but welcome last-minute donation.
The person who donated “only left a message saying that it had happened to her one time and somebody had stepped up and paid the whole thing. She was in a crisis and couldn’t pay it. So, she wanted to pay it forward,” Boyd said.
The caller also encouraged “us to pay it forward when we could,” Boyd said, and added the caller said, “it meant a lot to her to get help and she knew it would mean a lot to us to get help.”
A person in California donated $50, and one in New York donated $20, Boyd said, and added the donations kept building as other “people and rescue groups did $75, $100, and $25.”
Throughout Pocket’s stay at the clinic, many people called just to check her condition, Boyd said, and added “the clinic wasn’t sure if it was me, the owner, calling to check on her or other people because she had so many people wanting her to make it.”
Boyd said she attributes Pocket’s full recovery to those who donated to cover the costs of Pocket’s treatment.
The expenses were nearly $3,000, Boyd said, “and they paid all of it in full.”
