Hounds
Written by Brian on November 5, 2006
Right after Tyler passed his Canine Good Citizen test at the Greyhounds Reach the Beach festival, he started favoring his rear right leg. He had seemed perfectly fine when we had put him in the van with Carrie and Frazzle while Wren went through her Canine Good Citizen testing, so we thought maybe he had stumbled while moving around in the van somehow. He was still willing and able to walk, but we decided to minimize the amount of walking he did for the rest of the weekend, hoping that it would get better with some rest. But it did not, so Deanna took him to the vet that Monday to get checked out.
The x-rays of the leg revealed a shadow on the bone of his leg. For a greyhound, that usually indicates bone cancer. The most common cause of bone cancer in greyhounds is osteosarcoma, a cancer that can be slowed but not stopped by amputation and chemotherapy. Such a diagnosis would mean, at best, he might live another year. Since x-rays alone could not provide a conclusive diagnosis, Deanna scheduled an appointment with a vet clinic in Annapolis that Friday so that we could consult with a cancer specialist and determine our options. In the meantime, we did what we could to keep Tyler off of that leg as much as possible, since the structural integrity of the bone was already compromised. Our biggest concern was keeping him from running around the yard while we weren't home, so we created an enclosed area within the backyard around the doggie door using orange plastic construction webbing we had on hand.
At the vet clinic, the specialist told us that we basically had three options. We could have them do a needle aspiration on the leg where they would extract bone cells for examination using a needle. The drawback to that option was the possibility that the procedure would not yield the necessary cells to confidently diagnose the cause of the tumor. The second option was to do a bone biopsy, in which fragments of bone would be removed from the leg for analysis. The drawback to that option was that removing those fragments would probably structurally weaken the bone even further and might even cause the bone to break during the biopsy surgery. The third option was to go ahead and amputate the leg and biopsy it afterwards.
After several minutes of discussion and soul-searching, we opted to have them perform the needle aspiration. We felt we needed to be certain of the cancer diagnosis before we had his leg removed and we didn't want to weaken the leg any further. The specialist had said that if it was osteosarcoma, the cancer was already probably present elsewhere in his body: amputating the leg sooner rather than later would probably not affect the spread of the cancer in his body (the amputation would merely relieve his pain and the chance of the leg breaking). So we left Tyler in their care and picked up him that evening. Over the weekend, Deanna did some additional research on osteosarcoma and made contact with a veterinarian at Ohio State University who was well-known in greyhound circles for his work with greyhounds and cancer. He was studying the effects of a new cheaper chemotherapy drug combination to see if it was just as effective as the more traditional high-end chemo treatment.
Late Monday evening, the specialist called us with the results of the aspiration. To her surprise, the results suggested that tumor, though cancerous, was not osteosarcoma but something else, possibly lymphoma. Although lymphoma also tends to spread to other parts of the body, it can usually be sent into remission by chemotherapy, so the results gave us some hope. There was even the slight chance that the leg could be saved. The next day, Deanna reported this news to the vet at Ohio State, and he offered to look at the slides from the aspiration test to see if he could make a more definitive diagnosis. We made arrangements with the vet in Annapolis to have the slides sent to him and then we waited to hear back from him. In the meantime, Tyler's leg seemed to be getting more painful, so Deanna acquired some stronger pain mediation for him.
The next week, the vet from Ohio State contacted Deanna and said that the cancer was definitely not osteosarcoma, but he couldn't say for sure whether it was lymphoma or something else. He offered to examine Tyler and perhaps perform a second asipiration or a bone biopsy himself if we could bring him to Ohio State. We decided to go ahead and take him up on his offer, so as soon I as returned from my conference at the end of the week, Deanna took Tyler to Ohio State.
They went ahead and did a second aspiration on the leg. The diagnosis was that the tumor was the result of a third type of cancer called malignant histiocytosis (MH for short). It was bad news: MH does not respond well to chemotherapy. If the cancer had already spread, there was no hope of saving him, and his remaining time with us would be short. We asked them to do additional tests on the rest of his body to determine if it had indeed spread. If it had, we decided that the best thing to do would be to bring him home and prepare to let him go.
The next day, Tuesday, October 31st, Deanna called me at work to tell me she was bringing him home: the cancer was already present in his lymph nodes and his spleen.
Deanna and Tyler returned home on November 1st. Knowing that his leg could break at any time, that it was already causing him pain, and that it would never heal once broken, we decided that it would be best to let him go soon, before that happened and before he started to feel pain from the other affected parts of his body. Our friend Karen Williams, a fellow greyhound owner, was kind enough to dogsit during her free time on both Thursday and Friday while Deanna and I were at work to keep an eye on Tyler. We've spent this weekend with Tyler, petting him and giving him extra love while we still can, giving him steak for dinner, vanilla ice cream for dessert, and other extra treats. Deanna is staying home tomorrow, and I plan on leaving work at noon to come home and spend the last hours with him. We may take him for a brief walk if the weather's nice: he always loves to walk and he should still be able to do it with his three healthy legs if we take it easy on him.
It's getting harder to write this as I near the end...as I come to the point where I type out the fact that we will send him to the Rainbow Bridge tomorrow evening...that we will be saying goodbye to a wonderful dog who has been nothing but a joy to us far sooner than we ever imagined.
I know we're doing the right thing by him, that it's the right decision, but it still feels awful. When we lost Marcus (the first greyhound we had to send to the Bridge), it was so sudden and so unexpected...there was no forewarning, no prior knowledge, no anticipation of the difficult moment of goodbye. In many ways, knowing what is to come makes it harder, giving us time to imagine those difficult last moments, making us count the days, hours, and minutes we have left with him. But, on the other hand, at least we've been aware of the need to cherish what time we did have left with him, and we've been able to say goodbye a little bit every day with extra love and attention.
He's been a wonderful and much-loved member of our family. We will miss him, and we will always cherish our memories of him.