Jojo just turned 1 year old on Feb. 7th, and is an intact, female black lab. She is about 50 pounds, fairly petite for a lab, partially due to her medical condition. She was living with her guardian, who reached out because she started having accidents in her kennel overnight out of the blue, and would act lethargic/out of it on and off, and didn't appear interested in her dog food - super huge red flag for a lab!

After many diagnostics and blood work, her condition was confirmed via abdominal ultrasound in September - she has what's called a liver shunt. Normally, there is a large blood vessel that is routed through the liver, where the toxic byproducts resulting from the breakdown of foods are removed. Her vessel is "shunted" or rerouted so that it does not go through the liver, so those toxins are NOT successfully removed from her bloodstream, and build up to cause various symptoms, and without treatment, ultimately death. 

Luckily, Jojo's foster Mom was VERY observant and we were able to catch this fairly early. Unfortunately, there is not a great prognosis for her condition. There are two treatment options, the first being surgery - which is incredibly costly at around $10-15,000, and does NOT guarantee success, long or short term, unfortunately. There is also increased risk of anesthetic problems for her, due to her condition, so it's expensive, risky, and without a guarantee. The second option is lifelong management with a prescription diet low in protein, as well as medications multiple times a day. 

Being a non-profit, we opted to try medically managing her symptoms with food/meds, and since starting those in October, she has been THRIVING!! You would honestly never know she had any serious health issues, other than she does tend to drink alot, and therefore  needs to go outside to urinate pretty frequently. This, however, is still not curative, and because of her condition, she will not live as long as a dog without this condition. There's a wide range of survival times based on research, but she will most likely live anywhere from 1-2 years until 6-7 years, on average based on what I've read.  

Other downsides of her situation, the prescription food can only be ordered through the veterinarian (sometimes online with a written RX) and is very expensive, at a little over $100/month, and she needs a tablet medication twice daily, and a liquid medication THREE times daily. Luckily, at least, the meds are not expensive, at around $20-30/month