We have a 6 yo spayed bitch who is getting a bit 'lumpy':  She has a lump on her ribs (not moving, but attached), a couple on her flanks and one at the top of her front leg.  About 4-5 in total.  They haven't arrived suddenly, but she also didn't have them a couple of years ago.

I'm not sure how preventative to be about this...

Our regular vet doesn't seem to be bothered by it (he is a bit laid back and is of the 'as long as they're well in themselves' variety of vet...)

But we recently saw a different vet from another practice (for a booster) who recommended investigating further, with a fine needle aspiration from each lump.  This vet is of the 'up to date, be careful and preventative' school.  She did say that even then, the fine needle aspirates might come back with nothing when there is something - it is not totally reliable - but if we sample all the bumps, we'd have a better chance...  It might mean sedation but hopefully not GA.

Not sure what to do now...  Does anyone have any suggestions or been in a similar situation?  Thx.

I would suggest a needle biopsy is warranted here as the lump you describe on her rib is non moveable.

Hi Rabid I feel for you having to make these decisions.  I had a similar thing a few years back with my Mastiff.  The thing you need to bewawre of as i am sure the vet has told you is if the lumps are nasty the dog risks anaphylatic shock,  also if they are malignant you'll be looking at GA to remove them and if not possible to remove enough chem or treatment and if you don't want to put her through this then leave be if she is happy in herselft.  I know its hard as they may well be just fatty lumps and it would give you peace of mind.  My other mastiff now has a couple that aren't really growing but are there and the vet said to leave be ( i panic after my last experience).  He is a cancer specialist at cambridge vetereinary hospital and he seems to think if there is more than 1 and they are not growing rapidly they are usually nothing to worry about so i hope that puts your mind at restx

Don't know what breed you have but for such a young dog (well it's young for my two breeds) I'd be getting it biopsied.

Thanks everyone, I've made an appointment with the vet for Monday to talk about a FNA.  Or biopsy.  But something to investigate this further.

I certainly think you've made the right decision, they definitely need investigating.

My then 6 year old Sussex Spaniel developed 3 innocent looking lumps, like yours over a period of months, and my Vets initial reaction was to keep an eye on them, but the feeling was they were just fatty lumps and warts. During the Summer the largest one developed a scab which wouldn't heal so she went in to have all 3 removed and biopsied. One came back as benign, the others as mast cell tumours, so she had to go in again and have much more severe surgery to remove larger areas and hopefully get clear margins. They were sent off for grading and one came back as Grade 3, the worst you can get. So, poor Winnie then had to undergo a 3 month course of chemotherapy. She's been a trooper throughout and is now back to her normal self, we've just got to keep an eye out for any new lumps.

I hope all goes well on Monday.

Update - We are back from our regular vet. 

He first wanted to biopsy, but he did do a FNA.  He only got 2 lumps though.  The 3rd one was cystic, so there was fluid around the wall of it and he couldn't use this method on it - the 4th is on her ribcage and is immovable and he didn't seem to want to do that one.  (Not sure why - perhaps it would be v painful to stick a needle there, or not a good idea so close to lungs etc...??). 

He seemed to think he had got good samples and some good cells.  He said it is unlikely that one lump is a MCT and the others are benign - probably, if there is something sinister going on, we will find it even though we only FNAed 2 lumps.  I don't know if he's right with that though...  (!).  I worry we haven't been thorough enough if we can't check them all out.  Any opinions on that one??

From Winnie's experience one was benign, one was a grade 1 MCT and the third was a grade 3 MCT. I am obviously now paranoid about lumps and my advice to you would be to get each lump checked as they obviously can be all different grades. My Vet said MCT's are very good at disguising themselves and something that looks quite innocent can in fact be very sinister. None of Winnie's lumps looked the same.

Thanks Pedlee.  That was my fear.  I thought it was quite common for dogs to have various different kinds of lumps at once.  He is a really nice guy, this vet, but I do come to trust him less over things like this.

However, if one of them we can't investigate as it is cystic and another one is on the ribcage, it seems that GA and a biopsy (or removal) for these remaining two is what we will have to do now - regardless of the results which come back from the other two?

Hi
This is my first post on here ( been a lurker for a while ) and I really just joined because your post struck a chord with my own experience and felt I should share.
I've had two dogs that have needed surgery due to different types of cancer/tumour and now I would neither trust nor rely on FNA's. My first experience was with my 6 yr old bitch,who developed a large flattish lump in her groin, the vet took a FNA, sent it off to the lab and the result said it was benign but take it off just in case, this was also sent off for analysis, sadly the result wasn't so good, it was an Adenoma Carcinoma, one of the worst types of cancer, sadly my little girl died 7 months later. My second run in has been with her son, Spud, last year he had a group of little lumps that came up, one on his leg, two on one flank and one on his shoulder on the opposite side, two were harmless, one was a grade 2 MCT and one a grade 1 MCT, this time though the vet said in her view FNA's were a waste of time as the lab would quite often recommend taking the lump off " just to be sure" anyway and she felt it was a waste of money and unfair on the dog as it would need two sedations. Thankfully the vet got a good clear margin on them, he's recently had another lot taken off, another grade 2 and some harmless ones. My vet takes these off under sedation rather than a full blown GA so although any sedation is a risk I feel it's well worth it. So you can see why, after my first experience and my vets comments I wouldn't trust FNA's.
Best of luck, fingers crossed your dog's lumpy bit's will come back clear.
Jane

Hi Jane

Thanks, that is great info.  We are waiting for the results at the moment.  But given that we haven't even FNAed 2 of the lumps at all, whatever these results are, I don't see how we can be sure unless they are all removed. 

I think my vet would do it under GA, not sedation.  Maybe he would biopsy them under sedation, not sure, I'd have to ask.  I'll post here when we get the results back.

I think if the lumps are in the upper dermis it's usual to just sedate the dog, could be wrong but I think thats normal procedure, when Spud comes out of surgery he's still pretty woozy and sleeps the rest of the day, so although it's called a sedation I think it still knocks them out, just not as deeply as a GA.
If you have a shufty round the internet on vet sites the thing you'll find most commonly said about MCT's is that they can have any appearance, they can be big, small, soft, hard, scabby, itchy, or not,they can appear in clusters or singly  Spud's ones were all very different, the one lump that I felt sure was a MCT wasn't !,  and one of the grade, 2's was slap bang in-between two lumps that were nothing so just bare in mind that without lab analysis no vet can tell with 100% accuracy what a lump is.
I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for you
Jane

Thanks Jane - still waiting for results....!  Thought we would have them by now....

Results are back and appear to be good news...

Both the 2 lumps FNAed came back with follicular cells, and the lab has suggested they are follicular cysts.  She was spayed in 2008 and the only lump she had on her at the time was also removed then - this was also a follicular cyst.  So it does appear that she is prone to them now.  The vet said that everything indicates they are all follicular cysts.

I asked the vet about the lump on her ribs, which wasn't FNAed.  He said that he's not worried about this and thinks it is benign, from his experience.  Given what some of you have been saying here, though, that it's impossible to tell what anything is from its appearance, I'm not much reassured by this. 

He said that usually follicular cysts don't need to be removed and are fine just monitored.  Although sometimes they can grow and become inflamed under the skin, but we can monitor this, he said.  He said that, if we wanted to investigate anything further, he didn't think a biopsy would be worth the trouble, but we should just go for a GA and have everything removed. 

So now not sure whether 1) to return and ask him to FNA the lump on ribs also.  2) to do nothing further now and just monitor 3) have GA and everything removed.

Answers on a postcard.

Great news, but a bit of a quandary for you, if you didn't get anything done would you fret about it ?, if the answers yes then I'd say get something done about them, no point in worrying yourself about something you can act on.

Jane