We got Coal in March and he’ll turn one on December 22nd, we met mom & dad and he came from a loving family to our loving family. He’s not hip scored and we have no medical background of his relatives but his previous owner assures us his parents have never had any issues and that none of his siblings have had any issues raised as yet.

He started limping a couple of weeks ago on his back, right paw and so we visited the vet, it seemed he may have pulled a muscle and we were given anti-inflammatorys in the first instance. After one week, he was no better and so we booked him in for X-rays - these show that he has hip dysplasia, his sockets are too shallow for the ball. He has been referred to a specialist and we’re looking at vet bills of £15,000+ (Just over £5k per back leg and £2000 just to check his front left paw because X-rays showed nothing but he’s started lifting that up as he sits) and unfortunately our pet insurance only goes upto £3000 a year.

We are beside ourselves and have researched every where that we can think/find to help us to cover them.

Every charity we have looked into will only help families that are in receipt of a benefit; we both work full time and so, that doesn’t apply to us.

He is just perfect in every other way and I massively feel like we’ve let him down but we just didn’t expect this.