Pitiful Pup is Genuinely Pitiful

Sparky after her biopsy today

About two months ago, Sparky had a great doggie day: she went to the barn and ran around and ate horse poo and then went on a hike at the Hitchiti. She was so tired that evening that she slept hard and the next morning, she was limping on her right leg. Thinking she had just overdone it, I upped her glucosamine intake, but when two weeks went by and she wasn't much improved, I took her to our vet. The vet couldn't find anything wrong, just a little heat in her wrist, but nothing showed up on x-ray, so an anti-imflammatory was prescribed and she immediately got better. Yay!

Then I ran out of the anti-imflammatories and the limp came back, so another round was prescribed and she got better again. Last week, when they ran out, I took her back to the vet and more x-rays were done and this time something showed up. Something bad. Something that we're afraid is cancer, specifically osteosarcoma. Osteosarcoma normally presents in purebred, large dogs and Sparky is a mixed breed, medium dog, but that's the nasty thing about cancer. It doesn't read the literature and do what's expected.

What it is doing is presenting very much like osteosarcoma: upper end of the humerus bone. If the biopsy returns positive, we'll amputate the leg. A very good web page about this can be found here: http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_canine_osteosarcoma.html

Last week when I found out that it might be cancer, I told two friends. Between the three of us, Sparky has hit the doggie treat jackpot and has four new squishy toys to disembowel.

If there's a Beggin' Strip shortage in your area, Sparky and I can account for the shortfall.