Puppy love: Springer Spaniel with 'broken heart' is saved after village clubs together £2,000 to buy pacemaker

Siouxie and Richard Nelson, of Woodhouse Eaves, Leicestershire, were devastated when they were told Springer Spaniel Alice had just days to livec

Vets found only a third of her heart worked and she needed a pacemaker

Desperate to do something, Mrs Nelson, 26, set up an online money appeal

Within hours word had spread and the village had raised more than £2,000

By Andy Dolan for the Daily Mail
Published: 04:58 EST, 14 May 2015 | Updated: 17:38 EST, 14 May 2015

When Alice the springer spaniel was diagnosed with a heart defect, vets told her owners she needed a £3,680 pacemaker to survive.

The cost was more than Siouxie and Richard Nelson could scrape together, so the desperate couple launched an online appeal in the hope of finding the money to save their three-year-old pet’s life.

The Nelsons mentioned Alice’s plight to a handful of friends and neighbours – and word quickly spread around their Leicestershire village of Woodhouse Eaves.



Within only a few hours of their internet appeal going live, donations began flooding in.

In total 77 people – most of whom lived in the village – pledged a generous £2,187 towards the operation, allowing Alice to go under the knife in February to treat her ‘broken heart’.

Thanks to the surgery, the much-loved pet is now fighting fit again.

Yesterday 26-year-old Mrs Nelson said: ‘We do keep money aside for vet bills. But this amount in such a short space of time was unfortunately out of our reach. We only had about half the amount it would cost saved up.’

She added: ‘It’s a small village so everyone knows Alice. She’s so friendly, so everyone wanted to help her when they heard she was ill.

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