The V Dog

Our funny, smart, sweet, loyal, Velvet dog, has survived another near death experience. Let's see, she's nearly died of chocolate consumption, nearly given up on as lost, and nearly chewed her way through the 220 line to the a/c in our old house just to name a few. Well, she really wasn't "near death" this time, but she was saved from a sooner demise than she might have met.

Last week, we took her in to have a lump on her lower abdomen aspirated to see if it was one of the common lipomas (fatty tumors) that older dogs seem to get. So far, she's had one tested and Shadow has had 2 and all 3 have come back as something not to worry about. I really hoped that this one would as well, but when the vet came back from looking in her microscope with that "this doesn't look right" speech, I knew it wasn't good.

To be sure she was right about it, our vet sent off a slide to an outside pathology lab to be tested. We found out on Thursday that Velvet definitely did have a cancerous tumor. She's 11.5 years old, so she's not exactly young, but other than this she is a super healthy, happy, energetic dog. We were hoping she'd live at least a few more years before having to deal with this kind of thing.

The surgery was expensive, not out of the ball park, but expensive enough to consider carefully that we can't start a string of such actions. We decided to do it once, hoping to cure her of this cancer in one shot.

Velvet went in for surgery yesterday. They got the whole tumor and think that she probably won't need more treatment. But, still they sent off the tumor to be analyzed to be sure. We're really hoping that it's a done deal and that we've bought her a few more healthy years.

(no one likes to be a cone head)

(gee, thanks for the cute haircut for the holidays!)

In the mean-time, we've found a couple more lumps on Shadow. I hardly dared call to take her in to find out if they were more lipomas or something to worry about as well. She's 2 years younger, so I'm hoping they are just the same as the others she has. We'll find out next week.

All said and done, we've started a season of years that I have dreaded for a while. Aging pets are a constant worry and heart-ache. It's so hard to have to keep evaluating their quality of life vs. quantity of life left vs. our emotional attachment vs. the cost to do anything about it. These dogs have been with us nearly our whole marriage and are definitely part of our family. Grace and Hattie have never known life without them. I just hope we can keep them healthy for a few more years without too much intervention.

We love you V-Dog! Get better and go fetch the ball some more!

(Velvet and Shadow playing tag last Saturday - before surgery)

p.s. - got the results today (Wed)... the tumor was malignant and is likely to return, but had not yet spread. So, we're in the clear until it comes back. Hoping it won't be back for a long time.