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I'm holding another tattoo raffle to help raise money for Samson, a dog in need of veterinary assistance. Enter for your chance to win a $500 tattoo gift certificate AND help a dog who desperately needs it! Deadline and link at the end. Here is his story:

Samson was a regular stray that I would leave food and water out for at the end of the driveway. Every few days he would show up, eat and drink, and then be on his merry way.

One night, he came slowly limping up the driveway, his head and face swollen to the size of a basketball. He had two puncture wounds under his jaw, he was missing a chunk of his tongue, the padding under his paw was almost completely severed, and he reeked of infection. With the swelling in his head, I knew that he was at risk of the infection reaching his brain, and I knew that sepsis could kill him in a matter of days.

I brought the food and water up by the back door under the carport for him, made a comfortable bed for him out of a crate and some blankets, and hoped to God he would survive the weekend for me to get him to the vet the following Monday. I rummaged through my kitchen cabinets and found some old antibiotics and steroids left over from my other dogs, and immediately started him on them. Fortunately, I had enough to get him through the weekend.

By the time I had taken him to Southern Animal Hospital that Monday, his swelling had gone down considerably and he actually looked like a normal dog! Dr Baron gave him some more antibiotics and steroids. I wasn't worried about getting a full checkup, I was only trying to save his life. I really couldn't afford to be there as it was, but I had to do something!

I kept him comfortable under the carport, but he was a stray and I couldn't keep him from running off. Every time he took off, I prayed that he would be okay and that he would come back for his medicine. And he did! He knew he had found a safe place to sleep. I immediately started trying to find a home for him. I didn't contact TARP because I knew they were already overwhelmed. I didn't go to Facebook because I was concerned about where he would end up. I figured he may have already been used as a bait dog (or wandered into the wrong yard) and didn't want to risk him falling into the wrong hands. So, I reached out to some people that I knew personally that I could trust, and asked them to reach out to people they knew that might be interested in taking him, but we didn't have any luck after a few weeks.

He would literally sit under the carport by the back door for hours just waiting for me to come out and show him some kind of attention, and he would stare into the backyard longingly as I played with our other dogs. After much deliberation, my husband and I decided to keep him (despite already having five dogs ) since he had already attached himself to me and had been trying so hard to be part of the family.

Well, that meant that we needed to go ahead and get a full checkup at the vet. The news wasn't good. Not only was he riddled with hookworms, but he also tested positive for heartworms. Great. More $$ I can't afford to fork out, but I didn't have a choice at this point.

Fast forward about a week, his puncture wounds under his jaw healed up nicely after that intensive round of antibiotics and steroids, but then one side started swelling up again. Within 2 days, there was a knot the size of a golf ball under one of his puncture wounds. Back to the vet we go $$$. This time, Dr Baron takes an x-ray to see exactly what's going on inside. What he found was completely heartbreaking. The puncture wounds were NOT from another dog, as we originally thought. They were actually an entrance and exit wound from a bullet!! Someone shot him in the face! This sweet, loving, gentle, submissive PUPPY (maybe a year old at the most)!! This also led us to believe that the injury to his paw and the chunk missing from his tongue was likely due to torture, NOT a dog fight, since there were no other bite wounds. The swelling was due to the fact that there were several little chunks of metal (shrapnel) embedded in his jaw, along with a broken piece of jawbone. Side note-- We noticed that he does not like to be covered with a blanket. In fact, he freaks out! I think somebody shot him, wrapped him up in a blanket, and left him by the side of the road to die.

The doc said that just because he can see the specs on the X-ray, does not mean that he will be able to easily see them when he cuts them open. It might do more harm than good if he just went in there slicing around to try to find them all. He said that they may end up working themselves out, kind of like how our body pushes out a splinter, so he wanted to just monitor it for a few days to see how it did. I was instructed that if it got worse or started leaking, to bring him back in and he would start them on antibiotics again. Well, the swelling never got worse, but the wound did end up opening up again, so we started his second round of antibiotics. $$$$. I was supposed to bring him in last week for the doc to see it, but honestly the swelling went down and the wound closed up nicely after that second round, so I didn't really think it was necessary.

Just yesterday I noticed it's swelling up AGAIN. The cycle is repeating. Not only do I need to bring him in again, but he may want to take more intrusive action this time, which means a lot more money. Not only are we STILL dealing with this bullet wound, but he has to go back in a couple of months to monitor the heartworm issue. He also still needs to be neutered. I know that I have taken on the responsibility of caring for him, but I did not know he would need THIS much veterinary attention so frequently. We have been to the vet 4 times in the last month and half, and we're nowhere near done.

I have reached out from my personal page a couple of times asking for assistance, and though a few people have given what they could, it's nowhere near enough, so I decided to do a tattoo raffle to raise more money for him. Unfortunately, I understand that it's hard for people to give without getting something in return, so I figured I would offer a $500 tattoo to sweeten the deal! I'm going to keep this raffle going through the entire holiday season, so you have until Dec 31st. The winner will be announced January 1st!