September 2011 – Spencer's Story

New chemo and answers on the “spider bite”

First things first. Spencer will be starting his new chemo drug next week – Methotrexate. It will replace the adriamycin in his rotation and we will go up to 15 weeks instead of the 12 we were going to do with the adria. I don’t know much about this one. I haven’t found any posts about it on the tripawds forums. I’ll ask more tomorrow when we go in for his dose of vincristine. Tomorrow will be the end of his first cycle and so far he seems to be handling the chemo fine.

When he had his falling/weakness episodes our family vet ran some bloodwork (on Saturday). Those results came in and his neutrophils are down. The neutrophil count was 1,500. Our family vet said she imagines that they will do another CBC tomorrow before doing the chemo as the cut off is usually 1,200 before they won’t do chemo and with him being close a few days ago… For me, I’ll have to look into all of this again. My oldest daughter had neutropenia when she was 15 months old until almost 2 years old and her lowest neutrophil count was 12. yes, TWELVE. So to me, 1,500 doesn’t sound all that bad! I remember she was released from the hospital when her count got to 500 and that our goal was for it to get over 2,000. I don’t know what the normal levels are with dogs though. So I need to do some research.

And finally, the culture came back from Spencer’s assumed spider bite. It turns out he had a drug resistent staph infection. Oy. Don’t know what the primary injury was, it may have been a bite, it may have been something else. Who knows.

Oh, and still going with NO weakness episodes! yay Spencer!!

Changing his chemo

I spoke to the oncologist today. We will be taking Spencer off of the adriomycin. I can’t remember the name of the drug that will replace it… I want to say it starts with an “M”. I’ll have to call to find out again. With going off of the adriomycin we will be bumping back to 15 weeks of treatments instead of the 12. Spencer goes in Thursday for his vincristine dose which will be the end of his first 3 week cycle. Next week we start with the new med.

And now on to the heart

This should be the last bit of my c&Ping from other posts. After this I will start updating this blog and people can just come here for updates.

9/25/11

He is on 3 chemo drugs – vincristine, adriamycin, cytoxan.

he does a 3 week cycle – week 1 is adriamycin and cytoxan, then weeks 2 and 3 are just vincristine each week. All IV.

the adriamycin can cause heart problems. Male dobermans are already more prone to heart problems. So, we already were only doing 12 weeks of chemo rather than the 15 because the extra round pushes past the statistical cost/benefit with the possible heart problems vs. the benefit of the chemo.

Last week we were in Disney. We had a family reunion in FL for the weekend, and then did Disney Monday through yesterday (Saturday). My mom brought Spencer back home with her from the reunion and he stayed with her all week.

She commented that he fell a lot, which I hadn’t seen. Then on Friday it happened 3 times on one walk – like his back legs suddenly just went out. The 3rd time she had to get a neighbor to carry poor Spencer back to her house (did I mention that he is about 75 lbs?). After each episode passes he is back to normal – no problems.

But it worried her. So she took him to our vet on Saturday. They sent him to the ER vet where they started a cardio work up. They think he might be having episodes of cardiac arrhythmia. I take him back to the cardiologist tomorrow morning. I guess we have to figure out if we are going to continue the chemo, maybe try a different kind… I don’t know. hell. he has only had ONE does of the medicine that MIGHT cause heart problems. But we don’t know for sure if he DOES have a heart problem. The EKG was normal yesterday; but the vet thought that his pulse seemed weak? So far he hasn’t had any problems since I picked him up last night; but he is sleeping more than normal. But that could just be the chemo.

He seems FINE though. when I take him out I’m having to force him to take it easy (they said if it IS arrhythmia that while he has come out of them fine each time in the past, that there is no telling if he will come out of the next one ). He wants to run around and play.

9/26/11:

“Spencer’s echocardiogram shows that the heart size is normal. Looking at his heart as a global organ, the function is mildly decreased when compared to normal dobermans. [my side note here – apparently dobermans have lower heart function than other breeds, so to be decreased compared to “normal dobermans” means really decreased compared to other dogs.] There are small segments of the heart that are not functioning as well and more moderate decrease in function is noted. I cannot say that these findings would cause an episode of weakness or collapse however. I do recommend monitoring these changes in the future by rechecking his echocardiogram in 4-6 months. The adriamycin may not be the best drug to use for him at this point with the changes we have seen; but I don’t think that they are secondary to the chemotherapy itself. ”

so… I walked away with that his heart isn’t GREAT; but he isn’t in heart failure either. At this point, this isn’t something that is going to kill him; but we are going to have to watch it.

I talk to the oncologist in the morning. He is due for a dose of vincristine on Thursday. He would be having the adriomycin and cytoxin next Thursday, so we will definitely be changing before then; but I’m also going to ask about the nerve issues with the Vincristine.

He hasn’t had any issues with unexplained falling since Friday. he is still happy and playful – even at the vet today. (and he hates going to that vet, he tries to head straight for the door. ) He walked down to the bus stop and back with me today and was only a little slow (the bus stop is 5 or 6 houses down, all on about 1/2 acre lots – down hill to get to the stop, so up hill to get home). He did seem a little slow; but I really think that is probably due to the chemo.

Oh, and if he makes it through this I think I might try to find out if he can be some sort of dog to visit at the local children’s hospital or even at retirement homes around here. My mom was walking him last week and she said an old man came out and asked if he could give Spencer a dog treat. He then said that he had been sitting inside really depressed and then he saw Spencer come by, obviously having just been through so many surgeries; but still plugging away with his tail wagging and it made him realize that moping doesn’t help anything.

Starting chemo

Spencer started chemo on September 15, just 2 days after his surgery for the spider bite. here is a c&p for my update with that:

Spencer started chemo today and I’m OK with that. The doctor said that 90% of fibrosarcomas are level 1 or 2. And that with level 1 or 2 we would be safe to assume that all of the cancer is gone with the amputation. But Spencer’s tumor was a level 3. He said that we have to assume that it has spread at the celular level. His prognosis if we don’t do chemo is 3-5 months before he needs to be put to sleep, with expecting a tumor to show up in 2-3 months. With the cheo Spencer has a good chance for a high quality of life for 18 months before another tumor shows up. And 50% of dogs who have THIS cancer and do chemo go on to live their original life expectancy with “apparent cures” (because even with no new tumors it is still just considered in remission).

he will be going in every Thursday for treatment, on a 3 week cycle. The first treatment is 2 drugs that will take about 3-4 hours to complete. I have to drop him off by 8:00 in the morning (it is a 45 minute trip with OUT Atlanta’s morning traffic. I think I’ll try to be on the road no later than 6:30 each time to be sure I’m there on time). I’ll pick him up a few hours later when they call me. the next 2 Thursdays he will only have one drug (a 3rd drug). That one will only take about 30 minutes to complete the treatment. All of them will be given intravenously.

Normally they do 15 weeks of treatments; but one of the drugs can cause cardio myopathy. Apparently male dobermans are already prone to cardio myopathy. After the 12th treatment the scales swing to make the risk of heart damage more than the potential pay off of the chemo. So he will be doing only 12 treatments.

today he started off with the 3-4 hour treatment. The doctor did not do an ultrasound because with Spencer’s tumor being on his front shoulder it apparently would go to the lungs next. Since they and the lymph nodes have been clean (lymph nodes were removed and biopsied, lungs checked via x-ray), he is not at all worried that it has moved to the spleen, liver or kidneys. Apparently that would be a concern if the tumor had been on the back part of his body.

So far he seems FINE. He has his appetite, he has energy. Hopefully he keeps feeling good.

and… I need to get some new pictures! I took some on my phone, I’ll have to get to those.

And the hits keep coming!

Another c&p of an update to my friends:

(9/12/11)

Poor thing can’t catch a break!! On Thursday we went to the vet to get stitches out and I noticed another spot. It was about the half the size of the palm of my hand. The doctor looked at it, said it was trauma, NOT another tumor. Said to watch it; but it should heal fine.

Friday it was fine. Saturday it was fine. Saturday evening it was starting to look questionable. Yesterday it looked gross. Today it looked AWFUL. Took him in first thing in the morning. The vet took one look and said we have to do ANOTHER surgery. She suspects a spider bite. Even speculated about a snake bite! I assured her it couldn’t be that because since the biopsy a month ago he has not been outside by himself at.all, so if he had gotten something as major as a snake bite I would have been right there to see it happen. There is a slight chance that it is some sort of trauma that has gotten a nasty infection; but the likely culprit is a brown recluse spider.

So, Spencer goes in tomorrow morning first thing for yet another surgery. His 3rd in 4 weeks. Hopefully they can get this all cleared up.

On the plus side, other than trying to lick it, he doesn’t seem bothered by it! he is running, jumping and even starting to learn how to lift his leg to pee!

and an update on 9/13/11:

after today’s surgery is is once again on restricted activity for 14 days.

We JUST got the go ahead for normal activity on Thursday last week. He had been on restricted activity for just over 3 weeks before that (1 week after the biopsy and then 15 days after the amputation). But this time they are even more worried about it. they had to take out probably a 4+ inch circle of skin and then pull the skin together, so the skin is pulled REALLY tight. The stitches could easily bust if he starts getting all crazy.

Man. I so hope we get promising news at the oncologist’s office on Thursday.

Now for my favorite recent picture of my kids – Spencer and the kids just before the spider bite surgery. I edited out the spider bite because it really might make people sick to their stomachs to see it… (and this is the only non-snapshot picture I have posted so far. Please don’t judge my photography on all of the snapshots that you will see on this blog! 😉 )

A c&p from a 9/9/11 update to friends

Here is another of the copy and pasted updates to my friends on that photography board:

Spencer is still doing GREAT. Today he got his stitches out and got the all clear to resume normal activity as he is able (so still needs to be spotted when going down stairs, have to make sure he doesn’t go further on a walk than he can make it back from since he is having to build up new muscles…).

The doctor feels pretty certain that he got all of the tumor; but there is just no way to know if something was missed on the celular level. It it was, then we will likely see another one within a few months. At that point it will probably be too late to do anything.

So we need to explore possibly doing chemo. 15 weeks of it is the oncologist’s recommendation based on Spencer’s records that he has seen. I have an appointment for him to see Spencer next week to go over everything. I just don’t know about chemo. Spencer’s lymph nodes were clean. We are pretty confident that we got clean margins for the tumor. We are going to go ahead and have an ultra sound done next week to make sure the spleen and liver look clean. (normally this would have been done before the amputation since if it had spread to those organs we would know there was no curing it; but we didn’t have time to wait for the u/s to be scheduled due to how fast the tumor was growing. So based on the lungs looking clear in the x-rays, and knowing that normally these things go to the lungs first, we decided to be aggressive and go ahead and do the amputation right away since that was the only chance he had to make it even a few more weeks).

If the spleen and liver are clean, and the lungs are still clean… then we have to decide about the chemo. It would be once per week for 15 weeks. It would have to start the week we are going to be in Disney, so my mom would have to take him for the first appointment. There is a chance that one of the chemo drugs could end up causing heart disease down the road. It is expensive.

If they could say doing it would mean that he would have his original life expectancy of about 10 more years then I would do it in a heart beat. Even if he feels a little puny for 15 weeks, that would be 15 weeks and then he would be back to himself. And we would have him for years to enjoy healthy.

But if he ended up with heart disease as a result? What would that mean for him? Or if we do the chemo. Spend thousands of dollars. And then it still comes back and he was sick for the 15 weeks and then the cancer is back and we still have to put him to sleep in less than a year… I can’t say that I think it would be worth it.

And it is especially hard because he seems FINE. It is like before the amputation… he really seemed like nothing was wrong; BUT there was no questioning that that tumor was there and so huge. So in the end, even though it was hard to go forward with the surgery, I also knew it was the right thing to do, because I could see how fast that tumor was growing. But now, it seems like he is healthy. There is nothing that I can SEE that is wrong. If we move forward with the chemo it is totally just going on the assumption that there are possibly some cancer cells there. But then… there might not be any, and he might be cured already. But if we wait and it comes back it would be too late to do anything. (round and round my thoughts go)

One thing that did happen at the vet today that scared the crap out of me was that he was standing by the door and I noticed a lump on his ribs on the opposite side. It was about as big as half of the palm of my hand. It was flat though rather than a huge mass sticking out. I looked closer at it and saw that there was a sore in the middle. I was soooo worried that it was a new tumor; but the vet said he doesn’t think there is any chance of that. It is some sort of trauma. Maybe from one of the times that he fell. It was basically a big scab. When we got home I washed it with a wash cloth and it his fur came off with the scab, so now it looks like he has road rash on his other side. Hopefully this one will heal fast.

And on the good news side… He is down to about 75 lbs. Which is a pretty good weight for him. I’m not thrilled that he lost the weight so fast; but now we just have to maintain him here. He was 85 lbs before surgery. Lost just under 5 lbs with the amputation, so has lost another 5 in 2 weeks. It will be a much easier weight for him to handle on the 3 legs.

AND… here is a picture from the weekend before (Labor Day weekend). Spencer had started messing with his stitches, so he had to wear a t-shirt. We were sitting on the screened porch and someone came up to the side and said something to him right as I was taking his picture.

And a picture I took on 9/7/11, two days before he got his stitches out (about to head out for swim team practice):

just a c&p of updates I gave after the amputation

this is just a copy and paste of updates I gave to my friends on a photography board the day before, and then the days after Spencer’s amputation. The first post was on August 23 and then the last one here was August 29:

talked to the vet for a long time just now. the type of tumor Spencer has – a fibrosarcoma – doesn’t tend to spread to the organs. BUT… his is a level 3 tumor, which is the most aggressive and it DOES tend to spread. And it has come up so fast that they can’t be sure that it hasn’t already spread; but just isn’t big enough to show yet.

They said that if we do nothing that we will likely need to put him to sleep in 2 weeks – 1 month. The tumor is growing so fast that his skin will end up rupturing and it will also likely grow in and cause the leg to be lame.

Given the 2 weeks vs. a chance for years, we are moving forward with the amputation tomorrow morning. But hearing that 2 weeks was a real shock to me. Spencer just seems FINE right now. I can’t believe how fast this is happening.

*************UPDATE**************

this is just a c&p from my FB update, so if you are FB friends with me it us just a repeat.

OK, Spencer is waking up. I could hear him whining in the background. I have never heard him sound like that. 🙁 haven’t talked to the vet yet, just the surgical tech. She said Spencer is fine if she sits with him, she just wanted to come give me a quick call and then she will go back and sit with him again. The vet should be calling me soon.

************Update 2***************
apparently during surgery he was worried that it hadn’t been able to get every bit of the tumor. He had to take out t bit more of Spencer’s muscles than he would normally do with an amputation. But after the surgery he looked at the tumor, cut into it and found that it seems to have all been encapsulated in a layer of something (I forget what). He doesn’t seem to be in too much pain, just doesn’t want to be left alone. So someone at the vet’s office has been sitting with him all day. They were able to get the lymph nodes, which looked normal; but they are sending them off to be checked to see if there are any cancer cells in them. So it looks like Spencer will probably come home tomorrow! Depending on what comes back from the lymph nodes we will either do an x-ray in a month, or if they are clean we will wait 2 months. The vet seems to think the odds are really good that this surgery was a “curative operation” rather than just buying a few more months.

Also, I think I’m going to keep updating this post with the most details of any of my places for now. I’m trying to decide if I want to put all of this in my family blog or if I want to start a blog about Spencer and his recovery.

***********Update 3**************
(from FB, and then a little more)
He came home around 4:00 or so. He can’t walk on his own yet, I use a sling thing with handles to help hold him up. So far he won’t pee. He has never been one to pee when on the leash, so I think it is bugging him that I’m *right there*. He did eat and drink some finally tonight (he would only eat out of my hand, so I sucked up my disgust at dog food and hand fed him). I’ll try again to take him out in a few.

He is doing pretty darn good at going UP the couple of steps for our porch; but not so good at going down. and he does NOT want to be in his kennel. Before this surgery he would go in there on his own or anytime we told him to; but now he is fighting us on it. But he has to do minimal exertion and is supposed to be in there most of the time!

He does have a drain in place that that is well, kind of gross. But it is what it is. he doesn’t seem to be in much pain; but he really is going to have to lose about 5+ lbs (on top of the several lbs he lost simply with losing the leg) and build up the muscles for his front leg. he seems to forget that he doesn’t have that left leg and he will try to take a long stride and then will fall on his face when he expects the left leg to go.

And I really just don’t know HOW I’m going to get him to go to the bathroom!!!

***********Update 4 *****************

OK, Spencer really is amazing. he slept like a champ last night. no whining. The drain thing does kind of make me want to barf; but I get over it and just clean everything up. I can see HUGE improvements today from yesterday!! but it is now noon and he STILL hasn’t peed. so he hasn’t peed in probably 24 hours. And he drank 1 bowl of water last night, another about an hour ago. He keeps acting like he wants to go out; but when we get there he walks around a bit, then lays down in the grass. Fine. But THEN a bug flies by him and he jumps up and tries to chase it. he will make it about 3 steps, then I think mentally he thinks he has put his left foot out and so he falls. for the peeing thing, he has never been one to pee when on leash. Especially at home. He is used to having free run of the yard and often our end of the street if he and I are in the front yard (well, he goes as far as 2 doors down to see one of his friends). And that is when he normally pees. He normally poops back in our woods, which there is no way we can navigate right now.

I tried letting him off of the sling to see if me stepping a few steps away would make him pee; but he then hopped around a bit and laid down.

He and I are leaving in 1.5 hours for a 1.5 hour car ride, then he is going to have to stay in his kennel at the lawyers office while we do the closing. I really need him to pee before we leave!!!

************#5*******************

just after posting that he started again with his, “I need to go potty” whine and looks. So we tried again. I let him off the sling for just a bit. he had a false start where he tried to lift his leg, realized it wasn’t going to work and then came and laid at my feet. I gave him about 5 minutes, then we tried again and he peed!!!! for us old people – it was like why Austin Powers woke up from being cryogenically frozen! He must have peed for nearly 5 minutes! And when he was done his tail was wagging a mile a minute. I bet he feels SO much better!! This dog is amazing me with how fast he is getting the hang of things!!!

************#6****************

sorry for no updates for the weekend. We don’t have internet set up at the new house yet! (and barely any cell coverage there)

I am honestly inspired by my dog. I am going to try my best to learn from him here. He certainly is a dog who seems to have just decided, “yeah, that kind of sucked; but now it is time to move on.” And he has.

So, Thursday night he was so sad. I really worried that he wold take a LONG time to bounce back. Friday during the day I was still really supporting him with the sling; but he did pee (as I said in my last post). He and I had to get on the road for me to get to to our closing for the house. After that we got to the house before anyone else and I could not figure out how to get him settled and get the kennel out of the car and set up. So I just took him over to a bench in the yard and we sat and let him rest. For the next few hours he still wasn’t too stable on his feet; but he also was looking really red around where the sling had been rubbing. so I let him off of that again and he peed again. yay.

The next morning we got up and I let him walk without the sling again and he was doing more than just a few steps. He was really getting the hang of it. I called and talked to the vet about the irritation and him not wanting to pee on leash and they gave the OK to let him go on his own as long as I was right there to slow him down (he responds really well to verbal cues). I also asked about not having him in the kennel as long as we were in the room with him and was given the OK for that; but little to no stairs, which I was very good with.

On Saturday I also started adding pumpkin to his food. He finally pooped this morning.

he now is pretty darn stable on his own, no need for the sling. I have to really get on him to stop and wait for me before he tries stairs.

I had questioned taking him up to the new house for the weekend; but I now know it was the right thing to do. We let my mom and step dad have the master bedroom for the next few weeks and we are sleeping in the room that will normally be theirs (master is on the top floor, their room is basement/verandah level). so he had no stairs to deal with. It was an easy walk for him to get to the lake, where he liked going to just lay and watch what was going on (the kids swimming, or the birds, whatever). If we had stayed home he would have had to deal with 3 steps and a walk all of the way around the house every time he went in and out.

We go in tomorrow for him to get his drain removed. It was supposed to be done on Saturday; but since we were out of town they said it would be fine to have it removed tomorrow (Monday).

Oh, and BIGGEST NEWS of all – the biopsy results for the 2 lymph nodes they took came back clean!!! They think we got it before it spread!!

We are trying to come up with a name for the new house to honor Spencer (it is a cabin in the woods, lots of people there name their cabins ). So far suggestions have been “Spencer’s Hill”, “Red Dog’s Run” (he is a red doberman) and my 5 year old’s favorite – “Spencer’s Castle”. Anyone have any suggestions?

And because a post isn’t complete without pictures, some pictures from Spencer that first weekend at the cabin:

On to the biopsy and results

When we took Spencer to the vet after finding the questionable mass the vet suggested that we leave Spencer there overnight so that they could do surgery first thing in the morning. The vet talked to me about what we were likely facing. He said that I really needed to prepare for the likelihood that Spencer’s leg would need to be amputated. He did a chest x-ray to check the lungs and it looked like we were OK there. The kids and I left and I called my husband to fill him in. The kids were very upset. Especially my 7 year old daughter who had always been especially close to Spencer (I have 7 year old boy/girl twins and a 5 year old daughter). I came home and started reading. A friend found the tripawds website and sent me the information.

The next morning they did the biopsy. I had to go out of town for a little while that morning, the vet called me to break the news that he was positive it was cancer; but not sure of what kind it was. They tried to see if they could safely remove the tumor; but did not feel that they could. He said that the good news was that it did not appear to be in the bone at all. He still felt that we would most likely need to amputate the leg though due to how aggressive the tumor seemed to be. When I went to pick Spencer up that day (August 18) he managed to pull all of his stitches out while the vet was talking to me! So they had to go in and put in staples (he had internal stitches too, so what he pulled out was just a safety net really; but it was still best to make SURE it would stay closed!). Once that was done we were on our way home. He was on “restricted activity”, no stairs, no playing with the other dogs in the neighborhood. I decided that while he was on “no stairs” I would sleep on the couch so that he wouldn’t be downstairs by himself. He did great with all of it and by the next day I was having to really get onto him to make him not run around like he didn’t have 14 staples on his side!

It was a long weekend waiting to find out what was going on.

Over the weekend I read a lot on the tripawds website and I started coming to terms with the possibility of amputation. I started talking to the kids about it too. I explained that Spencer was very, very sick. That if he had to have his leg amputated that it would actually be a GOOD thing. Because it would mean that we thought that there was a chance that he could LIVE. I went ahead and told them that there was a good chance that he could be too sick for us to save; but that if there was a chance that we could, that we would do what ever it took.

On Monday we went by the vet for a suture check and the biopsy results were in. The vet we had been working with wasn’t in that day, so we spoke to one of his partners. I don’t think that she knew that we were already aware that Spencer almost definitely had some form of cancer. So at first she really thought she was breaking BAD news. But I think she quickly realized that I was prepared and assumed it was cancer and that he would lose the leg. She told me that it was a grade 3 fibrosarcoma. I later learned that 90% of fibrosarcomas are grade 1 or 2. I also learned that most often they occur in older dogs, normally 10+ years. So at 4.5 years old, and with a grade 3 tumor… the odds weren’t going too much in Spencer’s favor. 🙁 Talking to her we pretty much agreed that he would have the amputation on Wednesday; but I would talk to the vet who had done the biopsy the next day to find out for sure if he felt the leg could be removed along with clean margins on the tumor. I also got the OK to go ahead and let Spencer run around like he was wanting to since even if he did tear the stitches some, the leg would be coming off in just a day or so anyway.

So, I went home. The next day I took some pictures with the kids and Spencer with his 4 legs for the last time (unfortunately no pictures with all 4 of them cooperating). I dropped him off at the vet Tuesday evening for him to have the amputation surgery Wednesday.

Here is a picture of Spencer’s last day with 4 legs:

Background and first worries

So… our story. Spencer is 4.5 years old. He is a rescue doberman who was picked up in Atlanta. He had been set to be euthanized at the animal shelter in Dekalb County when he was picked up by a rescue. We were considering getting a dog and I was combing the petfinder site and came across Spencer. We were leaning towards another doberman as I had one doberman when I was in high school and college, and then had adopted another one after college who we had when we got married. Both of those dogs had been wonderful pets. Both had natural ears. Adolph – our dog when I was in high school – was a black/rust doberman who my family got from a breeder when he was a puppy. Baron was a red doberman who I adopted from a co-worker’s ex-girlfriend when she couldn’t keep him due to a job change.

We saw Spencer on petfinder – a red doberman with natural ears –
and had to find out more. The kids and I went with my mom out to meet him. We talked to the rescue. E-mailed with them. Then my husband and I went out to meet him and we adopted him.

When he was young he was… high spirited… as most young dobermans are. But he was great with the kids and fell in well with our family.

In recent months he had fallen into that wonderful age for dobermans – around 4 years old they start to calm down a little. he was enjoying laying around with the kids on the floor and going out to play in the yard.

In June I noticed that he had a slight limp. It wasn’t even really a limp. It was just that his gait wasn’t quite right. My husband took him to the vet, they checked him out and couldn’t find anything to explain it. He took an NSAID for a day or two and was back to normal. No further problems.

Then on August 17 I was walking with him down to the school bus stop and I noticed that his left shoulder looked really muscular. I felt it and it was hard. Definitely didn’t feel like a fatty tumor (something my last doberman had quite a few of). I called the vet from the bus stop and the kids took Spencer straight to the vet.

Right away the vet knew things weren’t good. Spencer seemed to not even notice this large mass on his shoulder. I couldn’t understand how I had never seen it before. I know at first the vet was wondering HOW I had missed something that BIG. But as we talked we started to realize it must have grown really fast. We knew it was not there 2 months before when he went in to get checked for that limp. He had actually been kenneled at the vet in July while we were out of town and we all agreed it wasn’t there then either. This thing was growing fast.

Our family vet decided we should leave Spencer overnight and they would do surgery first thing in the morning. Mostly to biopsy it; but also to possibly see if it could be removed. I tried to be brave and not let on to the kids that things weren’t looking good; but when the vet mentioned the likelihood that Spencer would have to have his leg amputated I just couldn’t keep from crying. Which set the kids off. We were a pretty sad foursome!

Here is a picture that I took of Spencer on the first day of school – August 15. Somehow none of us noticed this!