It Might SEEM Like I Am A Bit Distracted

Thursay and maybe I was a bit, but there's a reason for it. Well, besides my mom (who is doing okay - still in nursing care for the foreseeable future). I hate to even write this down because it makes it too real. But here goes. As you all know by now, I am a huge animal lover, with four dogs, four cats, and a horse.

Oh, yes - four dogs - the two original ones, Sweetie and Sasha, whom we have had for YEARS; Lucy the Treeing Walker Coonhound who had the seven puppies; and Dorothy, my mom's dog whom we have taken since Mom had her stroke a month ago. We always promised Mom that we would take care of her dog should anything happened to Mom, and indeed, that day has now come...ALL of our animals (and Mom's) are rescues: Sasha, the Border Collie mix from the SPCA, Sweetie the chow/lab mix from an abusive neighbor, Lucy - you know about her, and Dorothy was a stray puppy in Mom's neighborhood. I'll save the cats for another day.

For now, this is about Sweetie. When we first met Sweetie, her personality and temperament came out, thus resulting in the name we called her. She was emaciated. She had two litters of puppies by the time she was a year old. She had huge, oozing sores in her ears, for which we'd get medicine from our vet (and told the owners, offered to give it to them, but they could care less), which have led to chronic problems throughout her life. This was what she looked like then:



We almost lost her a few years ago when we were building our dream home - she developed an auto-immune disease, thrombocytopenia. Her body basically turned on her own blood, and she started bleeding out. After five days in Intensive Care and two blood transfusions, she was on the mend. She's on a ton of meds, but has been in remission ever since. And she is devoted to me, as I am to her. This is Sweetie now:



Recently, Sweetie started to limp a bit on her front right leg. I took her to our vet, they examined her, but apparently she was being stoic, not reacting when the vet manipulated her led, then took some x-rays, but didn't see anything conclusive. Thursday, I took her to an orthopaedic vet (to whom our regular vet referred us). He thought the x-ray he went off to take was going to be arthritis, not surprising for a twelve (or so) year old dog. He came back in with the x-rays he took of an area that seemed particularly painful upon examination, and said, "This is not what I expected to see. I expected arthritis, but this is a bone tumor." Sure enough, I could see where the radius had been eaten away by the tumor. The vet took a biopsy to see what kind it is, though most likely, it is osteosarcoma. In other words, bone cancer. And that is not a good kind of cancer to have - it spreads. FAST. And, often to the lungs, and other parts of the body. Chemo and amputation are the typical treatments for this kind of bone cancer.

So, now we wait. Wait for the biopsy results and figure out the next step. And lavish as much attention and love on her as we can while we can, always mindful what a lovely gift this dog has been to us over the years...