Ginger P. Sputnik is a 15-year-old Chow-Shepard Mix in Denver, CO, who needs $1,007 for Cancer Tumor Surgery.

When Ginger was young (her full name is Ginger P. Sputnik), here she was out of bounds in love with being in the world. I remember going to my wife’s office when her colleague’s son had brought Ginger home from a cardboard box of puppies a rancher had quietly left in his college Student Union. I, being older, had specified that, if we accepted adoption, the dog had to be quiet and mellow.

Ginger was a cup-sized bundle of rusted fur not with any demeanor that suggested quiet and mellow. When I picked her up for the first time, she exploded in wiggles and kisses. I said, “oh no this is a Sputnik”. My wife and kids thought Sputnik was not lady-like and so she became Ginger (the P. stands for Penny, my wife’s choice). With joy she could launch herself into orbit at the sight of you

We are well over 65 and with modest fixed income. The surgery to remove the remaining cancer and give her another day in the sun is twice one monthly income. her caregivers are in grief facing a drawn-out untimely death without a surgery beyond their financial reach.

We were not ready for our old pup to have a lump on her paw during a nail trim. Our vet removed much of what was a tumor and had it biopsied. It was both a benign and aggressive carcinoma. Our Google searches had shown us that the aggressive part would fatal if it had spread. The prognosis came back with a sense of joy, the cancers were still confined. Ginger has a good fighting chance.

The college Student Union where the rancher left Ginger and her siblings in the cardboard box is in the vast San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. We like to say she was the first member of her family to go to college, but she was a "valley girl" and flunked out immediately, a party animal that had no brain. She loves to gnaw up and down on the cat's back. The cat has no opinion about this.