Posted on Mon, Apr. 12, 2004
The Tribune - San Luis Obispo
John and Terri Shumsky are at their Paso Robles home with their dog Honey, who survived Liver surgery.
Tribune Photo By
Joe Johnston
Her mission is to save dogs with rare disease
Local woman runs nationwide organization
Adam Jarman
The Tribune
PASO ROBLES - Five years after Debbie Hammond's 19-year-old son died in an car wreck, she was spending most of her time at home grieving -- alone, fighting off panic attacks.
To give her company and something else to think about, her two other children bought Lexie, a Yorkshire terrier puppy in 2002.
But Hammond, of Columbus, Ind., soon felt she was about to lose her new lapdog companion. Lexie wouldn't eat and seemed confused.
"I didn't know what was wrong," she explained. "I was terrified she wasn't going to live."
After seeing four veterinarians, Hammond learned Lexie had liver shunt, a genetic disorder that doesn't allow blood to be cleaned by the liver.
She then searched the Internet for liver shunt and located Terri Shumsky, a Paso Robles woman who founded a nationwide organization to help those who can't afford liver shunt surgery, which can cost from $1,200 to $3,000.
Within a few weeks, Shumsky had scheduled corrective surgery for Lexie at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
"All I had to do was get myself and Lexie there," Hammond said.
The Terri Shumsky Fanny Mae Liver Shunt Fund has provided financial assistance to about 30 Yorkie owners like Hammond.
"When (Lexie) got to feeling better, she was like a whole new dog," Hammond said. "Without that fund, our dog would be dead. She wouldn't have lived."
That's the point of the fund, Shumsky said during a recent interview at her Paso Robles home. There, she lives with her husband John and Honey, the couple's 3-year-old Yorkie and liver shunt survivor.
"When you can have this corrective surgery and the dog's going to live a normal life, why not?" she said. "They're like a member of the family."
Shumsky, a former breeder, knows first-hand how difficult it is to lose a puppy to liver shunt.
In 1986, her puppy Fanny Mae became ill. Shumsky couldn't find a veterinarian who could diagnose the ailment, so Fanny Mae was put to sleep.
"Nobody knew what it was," she recalled. "It was awful."
An autopsy showed the puppy had liver shunt.
Shumsky later met another dog owner whose puppy showed similar symptoms to Fanny Mae. Shumsky suggested the dog be tested for liver shunt. The test came back positive and Shumsky led an online effort to help pay for the surgery.
That was five years ago.
Since then, Shumsky and her organization have raised more than $46,000 through donations, fund-raisers and online auctions for things like Shumsky's handmade, life-sized ceramic Yorkies covered in authentic hair.
One such "hairamic" fetched $5,000.
But the organization does more than pay for surgeries, said Karen Tobias, a veterinary surgeon and professor at the University of Tennessee.
"The most incredible thing her group has done is educated thousands and thousands of owners and breeders and veterinarians ... of the fact their puppies could be sick," she said.
Tobias has been researching liver shunt since 1986 and hopes to someday find a way to prevent it.
In the meantime, Shumsky and her committee of more than 15 Yorkie owners from around North America will continue to save one dog at a time.
"That woman must have the biggest heart," said Hammond, whose Lexie received surgery a year and a half ago, "because she didn't know me from the Man in the Moon and started helping me. I'm amazed that there are people like her in the world."
