"I looked at him and looked at her and said 'no I'm going to give him a chance'."
Clefty is a third of the size he should be. His cleft has meant he cannot suckle and he has been hand reared by his devoted owner.
"I started off bottle feeding him with a baby bottle and now he's syringe fed with puppy milk and critical care food," said Ms Woollam. The full-time Dargaville mum was aghast when she found out the surgery to fix Clefty's palate would cost upwards of $3000. She has started an online fundraiser in the hopes of saving him.
"If he doesn't get the surgery he's not going to live a fulfilling life," she said. "He's not getting all the goodness that he needs."
The unlucky pug has already cost his owners more than $600. One bill for a failed palate repair and another after an accident which saw his eyeball pop out randomly in the middle of the night.
"He woke up at 4am screaming in his pug voice. His eye has popped out and it had protruded out of his eye socket," she said.
The accident was likely caused by Clefty running into something in the dark, Ms Woollam said.
"I left the vet a blathering wreck. Going, 'oh my God please don't let him die'. They rang back to say the surgery had gone well.
"He had to have his eye stitched up for 10 days, but it's all worth it. He has been such a fighter throughout all of this, he's had to put up with a lot."
Clefty's vet Caroline Lamb, of Waipu Vet Centre, said the operation the pug required was "very difficult" as his cleft was so severe, about half a centimetre wide.
"It's definitely not something you see very often."
-Clefty's fundraising page can be found at givealittle.co.nz/cause/help4clefty