Our Abe…. the background

Our awesome dog is Abe. He is a greyhound who was a former racer down in Florida. We were fortunate enough to bring him into our lives about 4 years ago. As soon as we walked into the kennel, it seemed like he chose us as much as we chose him. We don’t know what we’d have done without him in our home. As it turns out, he was actually born on the day that I proposed to my wife (she did say yes, by the way), so I think it was definitely meant to be. He is now 7 years old.

Abe had a dental cleaning about 6 weeks ago. After he came out of the anesthetic, they took him outside to go to the bathroom. He tripped on the bottom step, and refused to put his back left leg down. They took an x-ray of his knee, but that was clean, so they thought he just twisted his knee, and that he should return to normal over the next couple days (this was on a Friday).

After we had him home for a few hours, I noticed some swelling on the front of his hock (ankle). We tried icing (with a wine-bottle chiller), but he still didn’t do much weightbearing on his back left leg. I called the vet again on Saturday, and then learned that they had taken the x-ray at the wrong spot where it seemed like his injury was. They had said to see how he did over the next day or two, and if he was still having trouble, to take him back in and they would x-ray the ankle.  He started putting a little weight on in on Sunday, but not enough to make us feel comfortable, so my wife took him back to the vet on Monday morning.

I got a text from her at 1030 saying that they were at the vet, Abe was just about to get his x-rays. Still thinking we were going to get news of either “he broke his ankle” or “he sprained his ankle.”   I got a phone call about 20 minutes later, from my wife’s phone, but it was the vet on the line. I could hear Sandi in the background, and I knew immediately that things weren’t good. They had found ‘moth-eaten’ spots at the end of his tibia (lower leg bone), which were highly suspicious for bone cancer. They wanted us to see a vet oncologist later that day.  I immediately left work to go to be with Abe and Sandi.

As I got to the vet’s office, I learned that we could see the oncologist at 100, rather than waiting until 600, so we didn’t have to wait all afternoon. We met with her and spent about an hour with her. She looked at the x-rays, and agreed that it looked like what osteosarcoma looks like. She gave us several options, saying that the “gold standard” for treatment is amputation and chemotherapy. We could also opt for pain control (though this would not slow down the progression of the cancer), radiation, or a bone hardening agent, which would also give some pain relief, but again not slow anything too much with regards to the progression.  At first, we were thinking that we would do everything that we could short of amputation. It just seemed like that would be a cruel thing to do.   We had a treatment of the bone-hardening agent to give us a little more time, and went home to try to sort things out.

My wife, who is very much into nutrition, said “we have to change his dog food so that it has no carbs in it” (cancer doesn’t usually do as well without carbs). We called the local pet store, and talked with the owner for suggestions (she also has had several greyhounds).  I went to the store about an hour later, and was able to talk for a while with her. She had said that one of her grey’s was 9 when she was diagnosed with cancer, and she did not do the amputation, but looking back, wishes that she would have. It was a different perspective than what we had initially thought.  Would this be a better option?

We called the oncologist back the next day, still trying to sort things out (again, we were expecting to hear about a sprained or broken ankle). We asked ‘what would you do if this were our dog?” She said, without hesitation, “I would honestly do the amputation and chemo. He is only 7 years old, and has otherwise been extremely healthy. He is very demonstrative with what he is feeling, and seems to be good at expressing himself. Greyhounds have pretty much had hip dysplasia completely taken out of their breed, so you would be surprised as to how well he functions afterwards. Even it if isn’t cancer, it is something in the bone that is causing the leg to be lame, and that will not change. If it is one of the other possible things that are going on (which is highly unlikely), I would still recommend the amputation to help him take away the pain.”

This helped to push us more into doing the amputation. Also, the fact that doing just the pain meds meant that one day we could possibly come home to a dog that broke his leg, and there would likely be nothing that they could do about it, was a horrible thing to even think about. We asked what our next steps were, and she has said to get a biopsy. So that was done, and though it showed most characteristics of osteo, it was not completely definitive. The amputpation was scheduled anyway for the next week.