What Happened To Milo.... :(

Hi guys, it's Alla here. A lot of you messaged me to ask me what exactly happened to Milo. So this video will be about my dog Milo who got actually paralyzed on Christmas Eve. If you're not into dogs or you're not into stories, don't watch this video. This is for those who wanted me to make this video. Milo's over here lying down right now. So I'll start from the very, very beginning. So me and my sister Inga, we went to Lancashire for Christmas to spend, just take a few days off you know recharge be in the nature and just kind of switch off really and we have two amazing borrowers in London through a site called BorrowMyDoggy so if you don't know it you can borrow anyone's dog and look after it so we've built a really good relationship with two two couples essentially and Milo is staying with them so we trust them fully they've looked after Milo for the last three to five years i don't even know they've been for us for a while um so Brad one of the guys who looks after him he took Milo for three days or four days don't remember now anyway so we we go to like everything's fine Milo's fine you know there's no issues and then um i get a call well Inga apparently got a call earlier while i was in the gym and Brad said that Milo's panting really hard like weirdly like from not doing any exercises um, just randomly started to pant a lot, so Inga said to him, you know, go, go take him to the vets, um, by the time he came home, it was around lunchtime, and I'm eating my breakfast, and I get a call from Brad, and I don't know why, I don't know if you can relate, but, you know, when you never get calls from people, like, from certain people, and then you get a call from them, it's just immediately, you know, something is wrong, I don't know, so just, because we usually chat on WhatsApp and Brad's calling me and i'm like oh my god what happened you know um and it wasn't Brad on the phone it was the vet and he just started saying you know like Milo's paralyzed uh you know like it's so blurry right now because i can't actually remember exactly what he was saying it's like i realized that my mind and goes into this state of like shock when something's bad's happening and i kind of just forget everything like my mind's blurry and i think that's my kind of way of dealing with things um it just goes into this kind of dissociation shock and i'm just like not sure what's happening um and then obviously later like in like an hour like i start crying because it's all like hitting me you know it's like a delayed reaction it's really weird so he was just saying a lot of things on the phone that you know he lost the feeling in his legs um he needs surgery um you know i was like really just kind of confused about what exactly happened you know and essentially basically nothing happened there was no accidents there was nothing Milo didn't fall down a lot of you said he fell down did he get into an accident none of these things it's it's later on that I found out it's basically a disease called IVDD which is like hereditary disc sort of I'm not sure about the medical sort of senses I might might not be even saying it right so if we have any vets here or people that have had dogs with this issue you know they could probably comment below about what exactly that is or just look online but it's very common in short-legged dogs especially Bulldogs we later found out that 30% of French Bulldogs get this illness it's basically just like a spine illness it affects the discs and what essentially happens the discs then slip and then they press on the spinal cord which then paralyzes their legs apparently can also happen in their neck there's different variations and any disc can slip at any time basically and um i didn't understand the illness at that you know moment when he was talking to me he didn't explain to me that you know this was stage four so every single dog has different stages of this illness stage one and two is when they just need to rest and you know they're just in pain they need medications stage three is getting dangerous they're starting to lose feeling in their legs stage four is when they're completely getting paralyzed they don't have much feeling in their legs and stage five is when they've completely lost feeling of their legs and they're paralyzed and there's not much you can do anymore as I you know as I was obviously upset I started talking to my friends one of our best friends Yasmin she said to me you know and then I was just you know I said to the vet as well I was like you know can we do the surgery like how much is it going to cost we don't have insurance and a lot of people said you know why do we not have insurance well not a lot just wanted to um also i just don't understand why people even say these sort of things you know when you're so upset and insensitive we did have insurance for milo for about two years when he was little and that insurance kept going up every sort of three months which was a bit unaffordable for us so i think um it was around 120 pounds and he had not had any previous illnesses or anything and when i did speak to the insurance you know every time we would take him to the vets and maybe had like an eye infection you know something very simple that could be treated with antibiotics they would say like oh yeah but that means he could have like an eye problem later so your insurance just kept going up and you know it's a bit i even asked if there's the limit and they said no so it could even be like you know two three hundred pounds a month for French Bulldog for the area that I live in and I did look at a lot of insurances and this was the best one that has offered you know a lot of things and lifetime guarantee um after a while me and I guess we just couldn't pay that much money a month you know for insurance and we thought okay well maybe you know if something does happen which we never thought you know I guess that is maybe a mistake but I don't really know what I would have done differently it's it's I guess you know at the end of the day I do take full responsibility so um we we just didn't have it anymore we didn't have insurance and he's been a healthy dog for five years we've never had any issues so we just thought you know if we take care of him and you know we feed him really good expensive food he doesn't have any problems with his tummy because they're prone to have you know problems with their stomach um especially French bulldogs they have very sensitive stomachs and you know we've dealt with so many things over the years you know making sure his coat is nice and shiny you know his bones are strong like we get him chewies like we really look after him properly so he's like a you know full-on healthy dog um and that's why yeah we just we just didn't see well we couldn't really pay that much money a month anyway so when the when the guy said that you know if you don't have insurance the operation is from four to six thousand pounds um you know obviously immediately you know like anyone I guess you know it's a lot of money that's a huge sum of money you know um like nobody has that money their account I mean maybe people do but like um so my friend just said let's set up a GoFundMe account see if anyone was willing to chip in even you know five pounds whatever people can you know you see people actually got got you know good hearts and and they do care about you you know and she did it all all the thing like i wasn't able to i was just you know i was just a bit like phased out i was crying and i tried to like calm down and think what to do um the doctor didn't also the vet didn't also initiate that you know the time frame was really important because apparently this illness it kind of it can go from stage one to stage five within 24 to 48 hours um and he got this illness on christmas eve in latvia we celebrate christmas on 24th um and 25th you know everything's closed like there's no trains no buses um anyway it was just all a mess like we couldn't make that decision straight away because we didn't have the money um obviously as you guys know we have reached our our funding uh because people were just absolutely out of this world so generous everyone's donated however much they could you know i i i met some people maybe once or twice and they were so generous with their donations um i haven't met some of them and everyone just chipped in started sharing the stories to you know save milo because we didn't want him to be paralyzed you know and the vet said that you know if they get paralyzed they don't really have a good life anymore and you know they'll have to take care of him fully because he would be like disabled yeah and um i think it took us two days to get the money um so we said let's go ahead with the operation i had to pay the deposit straight away of 1500 pounds um but what has happening with the like for example with any gofundme accounts um or any i guess i've never used them before they don't send you money straight away i had to prove that i am who i am i even had a call from them saying you know explaining what happened and this and that so it was like properly verification it's not so like you know whatever um and then yeah and then so the money doesn't actually come into my bank until two three days later anyway it's just basically a lot of stress um and even even then they also take a huge commission so all of the donations that we've made uh we had to give quite a chunk away to the platform which is fine i guess i understand that's that's how every business works but i you know i have done so many videos and i will share and put like little clips in between when i'm talking uh i am so so grateful and me and Inga are really grateful because honestly we wouldn't be able to have this operation and do an MRI scan on him so quickly until probably would have been too late without all of you guys who have helped and chipped in of course there's lots of other expenses you know we had to get him different beds you know the things now pee pads all of the stuff basically we just ordered a trolley as well and the operation actually um the total cost was six thousand hundred pounds so yeah we obviously we have some savings as well so we've covered you know but it was massive help um we wouldn't be able to do it without you guys so you know this really i don't know how to explain this um i knew there are kind people in the world but i just realized the power of kindness and the power of support from all of you that is so strong and you know it just feels very very amazing to have that support network to have these kind of friends who you know that you can rely on you know like something like this tragically happens you know you know that you have people who will be there for you and help you out so honestly i'm still a bit you know i'm so grateful um you definitely saved my lone little baby he's sleeping over here i'll show you in a bit um and so we went ahead for operation i think about three days later he did well um we weren't even there so we had to organize a car for Brad um because there's nobody drives and there's no transport plus as you know it's covid and literally it's like the worst time um they got him to the hospital they did mri scan they called me straight away they explained everything to me and they said he needs surgery if we do surgery right now he has about 60 or 70 percent of chance of walking again if we don't do the surgery it's about 20 percent um so obviously we decided to go with the surgery because that was decided anyway um so he had the surgery we weren't able to see him um they called us saying the surgery went fine but unfortunately he still doesn't have any feelings in his legs uh he's not peeing um and these are not great obviously signs uh which means he doesn't have control of his bladder um so fast forward in a couple of days you know we went to see him i will share little clips now as well um he was very drugged up so he didn't recognize me and and it was actually really, really heartbreaking to see him. So we got Milo some chicken, his toy, my shirt that I sleep in, two shirts, Inga's shirt, and a little cute bear that actually was a present. Oh, and a little Chewie. Yeah, so hopefully he's gonna feel happy. Guys, here is Milo, poor baby. Oh, this is actually heartbreaking, I can't watch this. he's he's been like shaving off and stuff he has his operation there he doesn't seem like himself it's okay my baby it's okay managed to fall asleep and in Inga's arms baby managed to lie down his paw looks they shaved both of his paws it's me it's mommy he just wasn't himself um he was covered in like scars and like he had the drip and there was just redness everywhere um he obviously it was shaved off with a scar on his spine yeah it's just it was it's very like upsetting thing to see um i guess as a dog owner because you know there's such a big part of your family i mean milo is huge part of my you know my blog even he appears in so many videos from when he was a little puppy um it was really hard he didn't eat anything we got him his favorite food you know some chicken and cheese and toys and i bought my t-shirt so he can smell like us but yeah it was really sad um then we wanted to take him home straight away but they didn't let us they thought um he also because he was in such a stress he started to move his bum or bottom or i don't know the way they explained it you know he was really really stressed like on the highest highest level of stress i think it's probably a combination of everything you know he he's alone in some hospital you know he does he lost the feeling of his legs he's probably in pain from the operation and all the meds you know i can just imagine if you were a human and this happened to you and you just wake up and you don't know anyone and there's you know no family or whatever so he started like moving his bum around all the time causing him more injuries so he caused injuries on his paws on his bum on his tail and basically that was all sore and then he had diarrhea from all the meds and it was all like swollen and just he was in a lot of pain and discomfort obviously they did a lot you know um to make him feel comfortable so we didn't actually have him back he was in the hospital for about seven or eight days after that um and yeah we picked him up on monday today's friday so we've had him for now four days um and it's been very challenging it's really good to have him back he's definitely a lot calmer he recognized us which was good um he's eating more less like in the morning sometimes he doesn't but then he eats it's like just depends on the day but it requires a lot of work at the minute um you know i'm glad i have you know my sister to help out we kind of we're a really good team and um you know we kind of just you know we we don't even like sort of split the tasks we just help each other out when we need to and and he needs walking like three times a day um um they were trying to teach us how to extract pee from a dog because it's really dangerous if he doesn't pee he started to pee himself but we're just not sure if it's enough yet so we're gonna go see that next week little scar here we've cleaned him up and washed his face i put a little bit of coconut oil on his little nose because it was so dry but he still got like a lot of like little scars here and then they are everywhere still like really sore but he's doing better walked him today fed him he ate half of his food he's covering through his wall in new york yeah he basically we need to hold him like for water for food we're trying to train him back up so he can start eating he's not comfortable in in certain positions every time so he moves and it's it's yeah it's it's been a challenging uh experience we have to carry him downstairs you know um we live on a high floor so it's not something like we can just you know go to the garden to show your progress i'm not holding him now he's actually doing better but he can't stand alone and then he starts to lose control of his feet he kind of starts to fall on one side okay then we can lift him up and help him to put the paws like this okay you're we have a king today he's only eating from my hands today i'm not sure why but at least he's eating we ordered a trolley so we hope that will be a bit easier now to transport him here was our stroller that came in just trying to do this um it looks pretty decent and quite big so i think it will be easy for him means we can maybe go for longer walks hey buddy basically it's it's really hard he's disabled at the minute his leggies don't work um some days some days his legs are a bit stronger so we feel like maybe he's making a small progress but then like yesterday i don't know what happened but he's just not working his legs at all um and you know obviously he has accidents i've already been pooped on and peed on every day and you know i thought it'd be more disgusting than it is i guess because it's your dog it is a bit gross but you just don't care because you just want to look after them i just want to say you know i admire everyone who has maybe a disabled dog or a child i can't imagine what it must be like for you because we've only been doing this for four days and it's really really hard it's emotionally hard it's physically hard um you know obviously we're worried that he's never going to regain his strength we really want him to because you know we don't want him not to be paralyzed we did everything we can and everyone's helped and i feel like he needs to you know get through this and needs to be strong and we've had him in a bed on the floor in his usual bed but it seems like he's not comfortable there so now we have him i'll show you we have him now on this bed because he's able to like stretch his legs and it seems that he's a lot more comfortable here you see he's like sleeping a lot more and just chilling little baby and we got this little crate where we put him at night so it's like a mini beds we've got like pee pads and towels in there so that hey look who is so sleepy um yeah so it's just been adjusting adjusting to this new kind of way and of living because obviously this requires a lot of time right now and we both work full time and it's it's just been hard but i'm not complaining i'm just sharing um you know real life and and real experiences is um yeah so that's really what has happened um i didn't know about this illness before it obviously happened to my dog i guess like with any illness you don't really know much about them until it happens um you know and and then sometimes you know i was you know i was thinking and lying at night thinking maybe i've done you know something wrong maybe i shouldn't have let him jump on the couch you know your mind does wander and you start to go into like this blame mentality which i'm trying not to but it's really hard because i feel like maybe i should have protected him more or done something more but you know it is what it is now uh you know we're trying our best to look after him and you know massaging him we're doing his physio um three four times a day he doesn't really like it we're giving him lots of medication also doesn't really like it a little tip i usually put like all the medication into peanut butter into a small bowl and then he just swallows that because he loves peanut butter and that way you know he'll eat the medication because they just obviously don't want to eat the medication it's like you know it's like babies and humans they don't want to eat awful horrible pills and all these syrups and things like that so yeah overall um it's you know it it it didn't feel like it was um you know a holiday safe for me at all uh obviously it's all happened on christmas and i tried my best to stay positive but it's it was really hard you know it's been hard last two weeks emotionally i do feel a bit tired um but at the same time i'm feeling you know relieved that he's now at home and he's with me and my sister um so yeah and i just want to thank everybody for the supportive messages and i still get messages asking people how's my life so i thought you know this video vlog is maybe a bit too long but it's for those who really really cared and and messaged me so much and helped out so hopefully this was you know helpful and if you do have french bulldog or if you have any other short leg doggies i guess like from what i understand you can't really protect them from this illness but you can do things like you know not letting them jump on your bed or your sofa or have like little ramps look at him stretching now um and just not walking on the stairs and things like that obviously we didn't know so but like i said apparently can just happen anytime here is the bill that just came from Fritz Patrick's, I'm gonna just open that up and get a shock hopefully not, yeah you little pooch you're okay, I'm gonna show you, this is the bill, um, this is when I paid the deposit so this was 6147 and then this is a second bill another 400, this is crazy, I love your comments and you know if you have a dog or you've had this illness, you know, I'm in a special group where there are some successful stories and there are some tragical stories, so um, let me know, you know if you enjoyed the story and um thanks again for everybody, you know, for all your help and support it really really honestly means so much to me and I just love you guys, I really really love you so much, um, I feel like you're my family and everyone was just so supportive and kind and you know, I really believe in you get what you give and it all comes back to you, you know, kindness and I think, I hope that's because I also attract people that are similar to me and are like-minded and yeah, I'm just really grateful, so thank you He's just going to rest now.