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Old August 4th, 2009, 10:18 PM
defender defender is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: san diego
Posts: 12
Omgosh, I can't even imagine giving pills to eight dogs in one evening! Last night I had the capsule wrapped in cheese, but that didn't last long. I must've gotten it into his mouth 3 or 4 times, and pretty far back or so I thought, and each time held his muzzle shut until it looked like he swallowed and then as soon as I let go he'd spit it out. Of course the capsule was getting more and more digested as this went on until the last time it exploded all over the place and it was FOUL. lol So it really went everywhere including all over his cheese. I walked away to get a rag to clean it up and when I came back he had eaten all the antibiotic covered cheese. Made me think next time I should just pour the capsule onto a piece of cheese and let him eat it himself. lol

Anyhow, I got some not so great news from the vet. Seems that he most likely has a mast cell tumor. The biopsy was inconclusive as to what kind of cancer it was but it seemed to definately be cancer. But I guess they ranked the likelihood's of several different kinds and the first was mast cell. The vet said that the next two on the list were not so bad, and one of them easily treatable. But for now, looks like we're dealing with a mast cell tumor. :sad: I scheduled surgery for him for next week but when I got home and told dh he wanted to see if we could get him in right away. And then I suppose they'll do a biopsy of what they remove.

So, he is ten years old, and I believe his natural lifespan would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 12 years. I feel like I might not act very aggressively if he was really elderly. Like I'd just want to make sure he felt good and use life-extending therapies only if they were relatively painless for him. BUT I feel like he is a really young ten year old. He just does not seem elderly or frail in any sense. He does lie around alot more than he did years ago, but he is very up for walks and such. He seems to jump about six feet in the air to great us when we get home. I guess I'm wondering if 10 to 12 years is realistic for him, if you didn't know he had this cancer, or if he would have lived to be 14 or 15. Seems like that could make a big difference in how he should be treated for this thing.

Here's a pic :
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