September 2026
Gus is a yellow Labrador mix with a grin that takes up his whole face. In September 2026 he stopped eating. Then he stopped wanting to walk. When we lifted his lip, his gums, which are supposed to be bubblegum pink, were the color of paper, and the whites of his eyes had gone yellow.
The diagnosis was IMHA, immune-mediated hemolytic anemia. His own immune system had decided his red blood cells were the enemy and was destroying them faster than his body could make more. A healthy dog's red cell count is somewhere in the forties. His was collapsing.
The medicine that stops IMHA takes days to work. Gus didn't have days. What he had was other dogs.
Four units
Over that week Gus received four units of blood. Each one came from a dog we have never met, whose owner had signed them up at a blood bank, driven them in, and held their ears while a technician drew a pint. Each unit bought Gus about a day. Four days was what his medication needed.
We were told plainly that he might not make it. We slept badly, drove back and forth, and checked our phones every time they lit up. We learned words we'd never heard: PCV, autoagglutination, packed cells. We learned that the hospital did not have a shelf of blood waiting; that units are ordered, shipped, and sometimes back-ordered for weeks; that during the worst of it the difference between the blood being there and not being there was somebody else's dog.
[Add your own details here: the name of the hospital, the vet or technician who was kind to you, the moment you knew he'd turn the corner, what he did when he came home.]
He came home
Gus came home. He is on medication, he gets bloodwork, and he can never donate blood himself, because a dog who has received a transfusion is excluded from donating for life. He'll spend the rest of his life having been saved and unable to return the favor.
So we're returning it for him. This site exists so that the next family in that waiting room finds the blood already there, and so the owners of healthy, big, easygoing dogs learn what we didn't know: that their dog could be the reason another dog goes home.
If your dog weighs fifty pounds and likes people, take the one-minute check. If you know someone with a greyhound, a pit bull, a shepherd or a Doberman, send them this page. That's the whole ask.
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Gus's illness, explained
What IMHA is and what the research says · Therapeutic plasma exchange · How dog transfusions work