brindlemom
Boxer Pal
We have been fostering-to-adopt a sweet boxer girl with numerous little health concerns that have now turned into one big one. When we met her, the rescue estimated she was about 3. She was low HW positive, had kennel cough (she'd just been pulled from AC)needed some dental work, needed spayed and had two "bumps" removed. We agreed that we wanted to adopt her, but the rescue agency termed it a foster-to-adopt because they wanted to have these issues taken care of before formally adopting her out. She went thru the initial surgery just fine. I had the bumps tested, and a full blood workup and everything looked fine. I brought her back two weeks later to have sutures removed and start HW treatment, but in the meantime I found another bump. They kept her and removed THREE more bumps, one of which turned out to be a grade 2 Mast Cell Tumor. They got good margins and were hopeful that this was the first one, we caught it early, etc. WELL, the other night she layed down with her butt on me and I saw a couple other bumps on her vulva. I took her into my vet (she'd been seeing the rescue's vet) and they extracted from one and it is indeed another MCT. She is also estimated to be more like 6 years old. She is fun, strong, and healthy acting. I don't know how to proceed with her. We recently lost a boxer that was sick for over a year -- I cannot do the trips to vet numerous times a week, the incontinence/uncontrolled bowels, medicines, etc. already again. My vet suggested we either take these off (difficult surgery b/c of where they are), have an oncologist do an overall check (can't remember what she called it), maybe do chemo... but she said that would just be a matter of buying some time, not a cure and it would be several $1000s. OR we could just do benadryl and prednisone and not remove every bump that pops up, not do chemo...also just a matter of buying time. At this point I'm kind of leaning towards doing nothing but spoiling the poor girl until she starts showing symptoms. I hate to make her feel sick; I can't spend a ton emotionally or financially, but at the same time I want to do right by her. She's a super sweet dog. The rescue couldn't afford to keep her, and she'd never get adopted by anyone else. My kids already love her and my other dog loves her -- he clearly needs a companion/playmate. Any thoughts?
