Oh buggeration. If the number of past serious conditions in one dog would enable us to be able to cash in our chips to avoid a future bad result, we'd be in. But nope. Grey's vet called today with his results. Unfortunately at four and a half years old, we've now added the dreaded cancer word to our vocabulary. But as many dear friends have been quick to point out Mast Cell Tumours (MCTs) are really common in dogs. I've not had time or inclination yet to delve into the depths of Google to find out our chances of this being hopefully the first of few lumps to have to remove and consequently many happy years ahead of us, or this being an agressive bugger of a thing that might get the hold of him.
MCTs are a form of skin cancer. Normally the tumours are subcutaneous. In Grey's case the tumour was in the tissue, which our vet said was unusual. They confirmed they were able to completely get all of it out. Which is good.
Grade 2 MCTs are a bit of a hard one to tackle. They're above the lowest risk which would be a Grade 1. But they're the equivalent of fence sitting in terms of estimating where on the scale they fit between the 1 the lowest and 3 the highest. Grade 3s have a very poor prognosis.
My friend Jo has blogged about the ins and outs of Grade 2 MCTs over on the excellent Galody blog after her bitch Slate was diagnosed with one last year. It seems we really need to know more about the mitotic index and the Ki-67 tests. This will tell us much more what we're facing and what our chances are. I'm very grateful Jo has done this research and published it. Not sure I'd be as able.
As soon as we get the vet report in we'll be sending off a health report to both the Breed Club and http://www.srhphealth.org/ With such a young breed (I believe most Slovaks are under the age of five in the UK?) it's important that we get as much information as possible collated for the breed as a whole.
For the moment, we'll have to embark on training to desensitise Grey to future needle aspiration at the vets for any future suspect lumps that are likely to appear. Unlike Jo's dog Slate, Grey gets very stressed at the vets and won't allow for sample taking. This reminds me of this excellent footage as inspiration from Denver City Zoo.
And of course Kathy Sadao's excellent advice on spending as much time training general husbandry as tricks. Everything you ask a dog to do is really a trick.
For now, Grey is happy. Blissfully unaware that anything has changed. He's fit, healthy and insured. Of course I'm worried and really don't want to think about anything happening to my best boy.
No comments:
Post a Comment