Cancer in Dogs Hits Home
This has not been a good week for Golden Retrievers in my family. My Brandy, who is only about 5-years-old had what I thought was a fatty cyst on his cheek. But it kept growing and when it got to be the size of a marble I made an appointment to have it checked by the vet. Naturally, it couldn’t wait and ruptured; making a pretty ugly open wound on his face.
The vet agreed it needed to come off and did an in-house cytology to see if there were any mast cells (cancer) so she would know how big a margin she needed to take off. Sure enough there were mast cells, so that means a bigger mass removal (fortunately he has large jowls with lots of skin) and a biopsy to see how aggressive a cancer it is. That will happen next week (might have the results by the time this is printed) so for now he’s on antibiotics and a topical wound cleaner.
In the meantime, yesterday I got a text from my sister who also has a Golden. Basmati (their last name is Rice) is a 10-year-old male that was adopted from our shelter. Basi hadn’t been feeling well for a couple of days and then yesterday seemed to be in a lot of pain so she rushed him to the vet and they found that a tumor in his spleen had ruptured. Talk about an emergency surgery! He had his spleen removed and is still in critical condition from all the blood loss. Sadly, there is a 90-95 percent chance that it is hemangiosarcoma—an incurable, aggressive cancer of the blood vessels.
Brandy is my third Golden, so you would think I would know a lot about them, but I just found out that they are on the list of the top nine dog breeds susceptible to cancer. Actually my first Golden also succumbed to cancer, but that was so long ago that I didn’t make much of a connection. For your information the other eight breeds on the list are: Rottweilers, Bernese Mountain Dogs (that was my last dog and he did die from lymphoma), Bouvier des Flandres, German Shepherds, Great Danes, Labrador Retrievers, Bichon Frises and Boxers. All but the bichon are large breed dogs so there’s that commonality.
The diagnosis, of course, is just the first step. Assuming Basi pulls through this initial surgery, my sister has to decide if she’s going to try chemotherapy on him. Knowing that, at best, it will buy just a few more months. I might be facing a similar decision after the biopsy of Brandy’s mass comes back. There are more treatment options available for animals than ever before, but it all comes with a price tag—both financial and emotional. It’s never easy deciding what to do, unless your finances are such that you really can’t do anything and then the decision is sort of made for you.
For the rest of us it’s a matter of weighing the chances of recovery and/or the quality of life against the financial strain and the guilt of knowing we didn’t do “everything” possible. Never an easy position to be in. Please send healing thoughts to both Brandy and Basmati and give your dog a hug to appreciate his/her good health!
I am so sorry for what you are going thru!!! My very first dog was a Golden (something I’d wanted since I was 9 years old and finally got at about 23!) At any rate, she got bone cancer at the age of 6. She had just gone thru being spayed (2 litters was enough) and very soon after she stopped eating (something she normally lived for) and was not as energetic as usual at the park. I thought something went wrong with the surgery. This was mid September (many years ago) and doctors kept putting her on more meds because they couldn’t determine what was wrong. She passed away mid December (my only regret being that I hadn’t had her put to sleep on Saturday when I was at the vet and Monday morning there was no other option). They did scans and tests and who knows what else but after she passed I wanted an autopsy done – after all of that, I really wanted to know what the problem was – final results were, she had bone cancer 🙁 Five (your Brandy) and six years old are just too short a time! I hope all works out for you!
Such a wonderful breed, feeling this first hand myself. Thank you for posting this for others. I had no idea that cancer was so pronounced in the golden retrievers and so many of the other breeds. I send healing thoughts and positive outcomes for our loving pets and owners.
My dog scooter, that I had for almost 10 yrs, died from cancer on the spleen, last Dec 7 2015 ! He was a black lab border collie! It was a shocker to us all! He wanted his morning walk like always then that evening we ended up taking him to the vet to be told he’s bleeding internally, next thing we know he’s having surgery to find out not only is his spleen in trouble but his liver, so we decided not to wake him up!
We just lost our dear Sheltie, Berry, age 13. He stopped eating , we took him to the vet, they found a tumor on his spleen. They removed the tumor and the spleen. Found kidney involvement as well. The biopsy showed a very aggressive cancer, chemo would not help. ( Hubby is a lung cancer survivor, 5 years of chemo). We brought him home, he just made it a couple of days and after another session of several days at the vet, we brought him home to get as comfy as possible, snuggled with him, told him all of the reasons we loved him, called the “in home vet” and held him while he passed. Of course, we are still devestated! I am going through 13 years of photos, will make a book commemorating his life with us. Still wonder what caused the cancer? Our choice of food, our water, his arthritis meds? We were fortunate to have had him 13 years, our hearts are broken!