I'm sitting here a little stunned right now. Spike has a growth on his back right foot that showed up about 2 weeks ago, but grew exponentially since last Friday night. We took him to the vet this afternoon and she said it looks like a sarcoma. Most hard tumors located in that spot are nearly always malignant.
He's got surgery scheduled for Thursday morning to remove it and biopsy it. It will probably be a few days before those results come back. The vet will try to get as much of the tumor out during the surgery, but said that he will most likely need radiation treatment afterwards. The only thing good about this type of cancer is that they are usually slow to metastitize.
If we lose Spike, Sam will be completely devastated. They are littermate brothers who just turned 4 last month. They are inseparable, and Spike even cried the entire trip to the vets because Sam wasn't with us. I'm sure Sam cried at home.
I hate my premonition sometimes. Last month we started looking to adopt a third dog because in our heart, we knew that Sam would outlive Spike and we wanted to get a companion dog that is well established in the house when we lost Spike. I never in my wildest dreams thought it would happen this soon. Spike has a bad case of hip dysplasia and we thought his end would be about 10 years old from advanced untreatable arthritis. He's been on meds for 3 years already.
So.....need the power of TCS to ward off a diagnosis of malignancy. Spike is too young and the brothers are too close.
Spike is the black dog. Sam is the red one. That's 165 pounds of dog sleeping on top my DH.
He's got surgery scheduled for Thursday morning to remove it and biopsy it. It will probably be a few days before those results come back. The vet will try to get as much of the tumor out during the surgery, but said that he will most likely need radiation treatment afterwards. The only thing good about this type of cancer is that they are usually slow to metastitize.
If we lose Spike, Sam will be completely devastated. They are littermate brothers who just turned 4 last month. They are inseparable, and Spike even cried the entire trip to the vets because Sam wasn't with us. I'm sure Sam cried at home.
I hate my premonition sometimes. Last month we started looking to adopt a third dog because in our heart, we knew that Sam would outlive Spike and we wanted to get a companion dog that is well established in the house when we lost Spike. I never in my wildest dreams thought it would happen this soon. Spike has a bad case of hip dysplasia and we thought his end would be about 10 years old from advanced untreatable arthritis. He's been on meds for 3 years already.
So.....need the power of TCS to ward off a diagnosis of malignancy. Spike is too young and the brothers are too close.
Spike is the black dog. Sam is the red one. That's 165 pounds of dog sleeping on top my DH.