I appear to have yet another dog!  I am a gluttong for punishment lol :-P

On saturday I had a trip to Kent, my idiot brother has made himself homeless with no forward planning and nowhere for his dog or cats.  As per his usual organisational skills, he'd left it until the last minute to find somewhere or the cats would be in rescue and the dog PTS by now :-(

Now, as I've been trying to get the dog away from him for 10 years now (he loves her but he doesn't care, he's never walked her properly, fed her properly etc etc), I duly drove down to pick her up.

She is, as I'd feared, in a bad way - she was 13 in January, I saw her 2 years ago and in that time she's gone from a young, lively, leapy dog to an ancient, tired, incredibly painful dog with serious (and completely untreated) arthritis, teeth so bad I can't actually see the surface through the tartar, sores on her chin, a dent in her tail where she's apparently been biting it to bleeding point for months (again, not even seen the vet and bro didn't mention it, the ex told me about it), and - as per the title - a biiiiig lump.

Now, I've plenty of experience with fatty lumps - Soli is plastered in them and Remy is fasting catching up :-P and Soli had a massive one removed in November as it had "fallen" down and was causing her immense pain.

But Tia's lump - if bro is to be believed, and given that he's lied through his teeth about taking her to the vet recently (she's still registered to me so I have checked, she hasn't been in 5 years), I am inclined to disregard most of what he says - has grown from pea-sized to softball-sized in 3 weeks. :-(

To me that sounds very bad - it's quite hard and feels "connected", but none of my dogs have had malignant lumps before so I'm only familiar with the benign fatty ones.  Should I be very worried?  Any other little signs of malignancy to look for?

She's off to the vet in the morning for a full health check, bloods etc and to get started on whatever treatment she needs, I'm just after any experiences that might help - if she does end up having it removed then I'll be wanting to know signs for if it should come back or another potential nasty one springs up :-)

In the meantime, I'll be doing everything in my power - legally if need be - to keep that absolute ****** from ever laying claim to her again. :-(

Hi Nikita,
Poor old girl, how sad at least you have her now and can give her the care she needs..hopefully the vet can at least make her comfortable. 13 is quite old though to be going through any kind of operation. I am not sure I would want to put such an old dog through this personally.

Re: the lump, fatty lumps are as you have mentioned quite common especially in older dogs..but the recent experience I had with a bitch we got at 6 years old was, I noticed a hard figure of 8 shaped lump on her hind leg, mentioned it to the vet when we first got her as, like you I didnt think it felt like the normal cyst / fatty lump. Our vet said we should keep an eye on it and if it changed or got any bigger we might consider having it removed. So when she was due to be spayed a few months later, I had noticed the lump had gotten a little bigger, not much but enough for me to have noticed it had also changed shape to a more oblong shape, the 8 shape had gone..they removed the lump and sent it away. The results came back a week later and basically it was benign but part of the lump had started to turn malignant apparently, the vet said it was in a transitional stage so if it had been left any longer chances are it would have become malignant..they were happy they took it all out but said for us to keep an eye out for anymore, which worried me a bit..the vet said to be 'cautiously optimistic' 

The lump our girl had was very hard not soft, and it felt as though it was under the skin as aposed to being softer and attached to say muscle if that helps? Give the old girl a big hug..good on you for taking her in, I hope the vet can help her.  

I don't want to put her through an op if possible but I think she may have to. This morning I had her off lead for the first time and she couldn't run - partly her joints but I think the lump was lpaying a big part.  It's very hard, almost immoveable and it's sitting tucked in right behind her elbow.  Her teeth are concerning me too, they are literally completely encased in tartar.  But we'll see.

In better news it may not be as bad as I thought - spoken to the ex again and (not surprised in the least by this) my brother is, shockingly, talking rubbish - the lump has been there at least 4 months, probably longer.  But of course he pays so little attention to her, he'd never have noticed. :-(

I am paranoid about lumps now.

Last year Winnie (6 year old Sussex Spaniel) developed 3 lumps, 1 on her flank, 1 on her hind leg and 1 on her elbow. They were all very different in looks. The first one I noticed was the one on her flank which I pointed out to my Vet on one of her 6-monthly check-ups. She thought it was nothing more sinister than a fatty lump, aspirated a little fluid from it, thought it looked OK and said keep an eye on it - it was about the size of a 10p coin. At the following check-up Winnie had started licking at the lump and had made it sore, so the Vet decided to remove it along with the other 2 that had come up in the meantime. The one on the elbow looked like a pressure sore that lots of dogs get, slightly warty looking, and the one on her hind leg was more like a pea.

All were sent to the Lab and when the results came back my Vet was surprised at the results. The one on the hind leg was a benign lump but the other 2 were malignant. Poor Winnie had to go back in for major surgery to make sure there was a clear margin round these 2 and also had all her internal organs x-rayed to make sure it hadn't spread internally, which luckily it hadn't. When the Lab results came back with the gradings the elbow turned out to be Grade 1 but the flank was Grade 3, basically as bad as it can be. So she then underwent 3 months of chemotherapy and (touch wood) is still with us.

Charlie, my old boy that I lost last year at 17+, had major surgery at 13 1/2 to remove his spleen, so I wouldn't let age put you off having the lump removed, although Charlie was in pretty good health and it sounds as if this poor dog isn't quite so spritely. I hope you get her sorted.

It's a lipoma :-D

No surgery as yet but because of the possible compromise of her movement, it may come off in a little while.  She does have very advanced osteoarthritis, she's been started on rimadyl for that (although given how much pain she's in, I don't think that's going to do all that much tbh), and I'll see how much her movement improves with that before I decide for sure about the lump (because then I'll know how much restriction is her joints and how much is the lump, if that makes sense).

In other news, she has a chronic, very deep-seated infection on her chin, her teeth aren't as bad as I thought and she was biting her tail to bleeding because her anal glands were full - that has apparently been going on for a long, long time.  A 5 minute vet visit would have sorted it.

I am so, so angry about this whole thing - brother has always said how much he loves her.  How can anyone just ignore a dog they love so much when she's clearly in a hell of a lot of pain? :-(

Hi Nikita,

Great news its only a limpoa and that her teeth arent as bad as you thought..BUT what a poor old girl, to have to be in so much pain and discomfort at her age just because of lack of care its just shocking, its just so unecessary. Rimadyl is pretty good so hopefully you will see some improvment in her movement over the next day or so.    

I hope you manage to sort her out, and she can now at least enjoy the rest of her life with someone who quite clearly will give her the care she should have had, before.

x

> Rimadyl is pretty good so hopefully you will see some improvment in her movement over the next day or so.

I hope so.  I am dubious I must admit - I don't think her level of pain is far off what Soli's would be without her trocoxil and that's the only thing she can function on nowadays, rimadyl wouldn't even touch her OA.

But with luck it'll be just fine for Tia, I really do hope so :-) Even if it isn't it doesn't matter - she'll get whatever she needs.  And my lovely dad has said today that he wants to pitch in with her medical costs long-term.

It's nice to know that my brother really is just a one-off fluke in the family!

Do try a Bioflow collar or other magnetic collar as it may very well help
with the arthritis.
Joint aid, the pelleted form, from Gro-Well I've found helps mine with
arthritis.

Well, the rimadyl is helping but only a tiny bit.  The vet was talking about starting her at 3mg/kg (max dose being 4mg/kg) and taking it down to the lowest possible - when we go back next week I will be putting her on the trocoxil I think.  Lowering it isn't even an option, it's barely touching the pain as it is.  The other day Soli ever-so-lightly brushed her foot and very nearly got chomped for it :-(  It's also keeping things a bit squishy which with her anal glands being full before is something I have to consider as well - not known anyone have trouble with the trocoxil though (spoke to a vet who specialises in HD/OA the other week about it and he said the same).

Boxacrazy - I've heard good things about the joint aid but the price is ridiculous for a large dog!  And with no insurance I'll be paying for all her meds direct, so I have to consider that.

I am off to Holland & Barrett today though so I will stock up on green-lipped mussel, I did try her on devil's claw which helped a tiny bit but it's not agreeing with the rimadyl.

Her chin is not bothering her now but it's not clearing up any further either so I suspect we may end up with sytemic ABs for that.  Anal glands still bothering her a tiny bit but nothing like before, she's not touched her tail since she's been here :-)

Has your vet considered previcox as an alternative to the rimadyl? Hamish has been on that for a couple of years now and I can adjust the dosage as and when he is stiff and obviously uncomfortable. At the moment he is on half a tablet daily, on bad days I give him 1 tablet and he has been known to go without completely.

We've not got to that point yet but honestly, having gone through all of this with Soli - and with the rimadyl making Tia's waste squishy already - I would rather skip straight to the trocoxil with its pretty-much non-existant side effects and fantastic painkilling quality.  Soli worked her way through rimadyl, metacam and previcox before the trocoxil - none of them touched her OA and Tia's OA looks to be of a similar severity.

Soli is actually now on it off-license because her OA can't be touched by anything else - she was on tramadol during the 2-month 'break' from the trocoxil but last time she could barely walk for 3 days straight, she's now on it full-time.

So having seen all that - and considering how long Tia has already been in pain severe enough to cause her to cry out many times a day, and the side effect issue - I would rather skip straight to the good stuff :-) I did say as much to the vet and she had no problem with it (I think because of Soli, and I seem to know more about it than anyone at the practise!).

We've got another week on the rimadyl so there's still time for it to work more but I suspect it's not going to get much better than it is now.

Another wee update.

I took Tia back to the vet on saturday, half a week earlier than planned - on lead walks she's been showing signs of neck pain which had gotten worse in the previous couple of days.

Nothing sinister hopefully, we're going to see if the anti inflamms settle it down and if not then look at taking x-rays.  More than likely it's muscle damage due to a lifetime of pulling like a train on a lead and collar and running rampant on a flexi because my idiot brother couldn't be bothered to control her, on the rare occasions he did take her out...

She has trocoxil now too, just giving her some time to make sure the rimadyl is gone first.

Oh, and she's lost half a kilo :-)