Ava Marie Photography LLC: Poor Buddha

So I have a lot of people asking about Buddha these days. Buddha is our 15 month old Golden Retriever who has recently moved up to NH from AZ. He's 100% Golden Retriever, but I get asked ALL of the time if he's a Lab because he has such white fur. He is extremely lovable, easy going, friendly and sweet... he truly wouldn't hurt a fly! He was Ava's 2nd birthday present.

Unfortunately Buddha has been very sick lately. He first started limping on his back left leg when he was still in AZ, so at the end of April we took him to the vet down there and they took xrays and said he had a bone fracture and he'd need to just rest for 6 weeks, we also noticed that he had a tiny cut on his front foot. A few days after this he hopped on a plane and flew up to NH to live in our new home up here since I recently moved. The cut on his front foot wasn't healing and was kept getting worse, and his back leg burst open to the bone with blood coming out (I know gross, and poor poor Buddha!). So we took him to Pembroke Animal Hospital to have a check up... long story short, they sent us to Brentwood Animal Hospital to have cultures of his leg taken and to take to an animal orthopedic surgeon. What we have learned is that Buddha has a fungus called cryptococcosis eating away at the bones in his legs and creating lesions all over his body. As far as we know this hasn't spread to his chest which is very good news, BUT it is very painful. He is on a treatment and right now it looks like he will pull through, although the recovery will be about six months. He will have to have his front toe removed where the cut was because the fungus ate all of the bone out of it, and we still aren't sure what will need to happen with his back leg. We have been under the care of Dr. Reeve at Pembroke Animal Hospital and she has been an AMAZING vet and we are so thankful for all of her help. We are really, really hoping Buddha fights this because he's such a great, wonderful and amazing pup. As you'll see in the pictures he has three bandages on his legs that I need to change daily, although one of them just covers up a patch that he is wearing to control his pain. I should also say that these fungus problems are mostly found in the southwest, so he must have breathed it in while he was still in AZ. Our vet hasn't seen an animal with this problem before in NH... also big dogs and puppies are more susceptible to this and Buddha is both big and a pup. He is slowly showing improvement, but this week he has especially been seeming more like his old puppy self...