Phineas is a one-year-old Papillon in Dallas, TX, who needs $2,000 for emergency heart surgery.

Phineas had a brush with death no one saw coming!

Pooch Savers Rescue took in the young Papillon pup from someone with too many dogs.

Phineas looked like he was in perfect health, but when Scott B. from the rescue brought him to their veterinarian, he received shocking news: Phineas had a life-threatening heart murmur. "Heart murmurs are graded on a scale of one through six. Six is the worst kind, and Phineas had a grade six," Scott tells Waggle.

An echocardiogram of Phineas's heart found one of the ducts that should have closed at birth did not. He needed immediate surgery to close the duct. The rescue contacted Texas A&M University's veterinary cardiology department.

"When we sent the echo results to them, they called us and said, 'You need to get him up here right away.' It was that urgent. His heart was at risk of failing at any moment," Scott says.

The rescue whisked Phineas to the university. The next day, surgeons inserted a stent through a vein in his leg. The operation was a success! They closed the duct, and blood no longer could seep through. "Had we waited, he would have been dead," Scott says. "He would have gone downhill."

Now the rescue is racing again, this time to pay off Phineas's life-saving surgery bill. The nonprofit group uploaded this Waggle campaign hoping generous pet lovers will give and help Phineas live happily ever after. "We are so grateful to everyone who helps," Scott says.