Good Karma
When we first got Karma’s story, we were worried. Doctor Tarantino (yes, same name as the famous director, no relation!) in Missouri referred Karma to us. At his practice he gets customers who truly have no ability to pay, no access to credit, and who are often not very capable to help themselves.
Fundraising like this can be difficult, and Karma looked to be an especially difficult case. Doctor Tarantino informed us that Karma’s owner was disabled, a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). And through Carl lived on his own and was able to take care of himself and his dog, he had significant memory problems, trouble focusing and understanding new things. And he was poor.
Carl had been a carpenter but had a serious fall at a construction site and had hit his head on concrete. In fact, he had nearly died. Now he got by on minimal government assistance and help from his sister, although she lived some distance from him
A successful funding campaign depends on photographs. The only way people will see Karma is in the photos we put online. Donors will not meet her in-person, she won’t be on TV. If she is going to catch someone’s attention, it is going to be through the pictures we have of her, and though we are good at editing and adjusting photos to make them “pop” and be as compelling as possible, we still need the original photo sent to us to be good. To be high resolution, so we can edit it properly. To be focused. The photo’s we got of Karma were not good.
Karma's photos:
The photos were lower resolution, due to the old phone that Carl had. The lighting was bad. This made the grainy, and thus hard to edit. And though we gave Carl lots of direction, it became clear that he could not really process what we were telling him. His sister came to help once, but she also had problems understanding what was needed, and being able to provide it. You can see in the photos here, which have already been painstakingly edited. But also notice there are no photos of the tumor!
It was a large tumor, made it hard for Karma to even stand or walk! Photo of the tumor would be important in telling her story and getting people to donate to her, but we never got any. Somehow Carl was not able to understand we needed them. And video? We would have loved a video of Karma living with her tumor, trying to walk, having difficulties. All of these would have been compelling content showing people her story! But getting pictures was almost impossible, video was just too much to even attempt.
So we made do with what we had. And we decided to make her photos part of her story in a direct way, we titled her fundraiser “Karma’s photos aren’t that good, but that isn’t her fault!” And it worked! Or maybe it was Carl’s story, or probably both. But people donated.
Her fundraiser went up at the beginning of January, 2025 and by the middle of the month Karma had the $1825.00 she needed! A couple of weeks, a bit less actually, and Karma was back at Dr Tarantino’s being prepped for surgery! Jennifer Campbell made a significant contribution, more than half and in total there were 26 donors. Some small, some big like Jennifer, it takes everyone working together. And it took Dr Tarantino, who did this procedure at substantially less than any specialist would charge. Look at this tumor!
(The pictures below might be graphic to some, but we think they are nothing terrible. Karma was fully sedated. But, if you do not like pictures of any blood or tissue, then probably stop here….
Otherwise, scroll down. Her surgery is actually quite interesting! We left a little space before the pictures to protect the squeamish)
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Here Dr Tarantino is holding the tumor in his hand, before removing it:
Notice that string-like tissue the green arrow is pointing to? That is the sciatic nerve. It is arguably the more important nerve in the body, and is absolutely the longest and largest, going from the lower back through each rear leg. If this nerve is damaged, then Karma will be paralyzed in the rear, at best. It could even be worse. And the tumor was wrapped around it!
Dr Tarantino had to carefully, slowly, and frankly with great skill remove the tumor without damaging the nerve in the slightest. And he did it! Look at that tumor, five inches wide, more than six inches long, bigger than a large man’s hand.
The surgery was a success. The tumor is gone, not cancerous, and Karma was able to walk out of the vet clinic the next day and go back home! Carl’s sister tell us that he will take her on long walks, though that is on pause for a bit until she heals up, but that he also will sit and talk softly to Karma for hours on end. We’re happy to see Karma’s story have this happy ending! And thankful for the donors who saw through the low quality photos to Karma, and to help her. We wish them the best karma!!
Karma post surgery, waiting to go home:
Free Animal Doctor is a crowdfunding platform for animal THAT WORKS.
Why does it work? Because we only pay the vet, never the owner. So donors know their donation will go to the animal, as they intend.
We take out NO fees from donations.
And we verify every case, many times talking to the doctor ourselves, and even working with the doctor on multiple cases, like we do with Dr Tarantino.
See animals that are in need today at www.FreeAnimalDoctor.org
Dr Taratino’s clinic is Blue Ridge Plaza Animal Clinic https://www.blueridgeplazaanimalclinic.com/
Karma’s fundraiser is archived here: https://freeanimaldoctor.org/campaigns/karma/
