Saturday 26 May 2012

My Dog Chubbs

I have 2 dogs and 2 cats.

Two domestic medium haired cats, Louie and Mintie an Akita x Heeler, Keeta (very original I know!) and an American Bulldog called Chubbs.

3 weeks ago on a Sunday morning I woke up and noticed Chubbs wasn't acting himself. He wasn't jumping around all excited to see us, he seemed depressed and I noticed he was limping on his right hind limb. I also noticed a small lump on the lower part of his front left limb. On Tuesday he was still limping so I decided to take him to work with me to get checked out and get the lump removed.

We anaethetised him and had a feel of his legs and took some radiographs of his legs and hips. The news wasn't good. It was diagnosed he had a partial cruciate tear and hip displaysia. Chubbs is only 3.5 years old. Whilst he was anaethetised Dr. Brown removed the lump and did a fine need aspirate to try and determine what the lump was. Dr. Brown didn't think it looked good, the differential diagnosis was a mast cell tumor which is a very aggressive form of cancer. We sent the lump away so we knew exactly what we were dealing with. I had to go home and break the news to my husband that our crazy, larakin of a dog has a cruciate rupture, hip displaysia and possibly cancer. It wasn't a good day.



Chubbs recovering after his big day at the vet.


The next couple of days were even worse, waiting on the test results, trying to decide what to do with our beloved pooch. If it's cancer do we euthanise? (I was convinced it was cancer) Do we proceed with surgery on the cruciate? Do we rest him and keep him on anti flammatories? My mind was jumbled and I was mixed with emotions.

Friday, the test results came back for Chubbs histopathology. The lump was a histiocytoma - a small bening lump that usually occurs in puppies less than 12 months old. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Dr. Brown had also taken sufficient margins when removing the tumor so it will never be back!

Now we only had to deal with the cruciate issues. I went home and researched every vet, every procedure that could be done. I discovered that it seemed a TPLO procedure was best for dogs as large as Chubbs. There was another procedure I read up on, a de-angelis, which was more successful in smaller dogs. I came accross a very good source, a book The Dog Cruciate System by Dr. Chris Boulton

The only option in my mind was TPLO surgery. I had been given a reference to an orthopaedic specialist who could do surgery, but it was at a great price. Honestly I didn't care, I just wanted my boy to be better, I wanted the best for him. It wasn't only my decision so I had to speak to my husband and see what he thought was a good idea. He wanted a second opinion....so off to another vet he went with Chubbs.

The outcome from the second vet was to give Chubbs some cartrophen injections once a week for four weeks and see how he is at the end of it.

Today we went to the vet for his second cartrophen injection. It was a different vet at the same practice who gave us a different opinion again............that Chubbs will 90% need surgery and he can do a more simple, much cheaper procedure, a modified de-angelis technique.

At the moment I'm still confused and not confident with going ahead with a modified de-angelis technique as i've heard it doesn't work as well with larger dogs.....

It's all very confusing and stressful. As I've mentioned before, All I want is the best for my boy.

1 comment:

  1. Poor chubbsie :) Tough decision, hope he's not in too much pain xxx

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