Artemis

Artemis is a 9-ish year old Cane Corso mix I adopted from a shelter back in 2003. He’s either a mix or a really poorly bred pure bred and either is completely believable considering where he came from. Regardless, he is hands down the most awesome dog ever and my shadow. He has two sisters:  another blue brindle Corso who is 10, and a Dane/Bullmastiff mix who is 5.  His name means the goddess of the hunt, but he was named that when I got him (all my dogs have been) and I didn’t see the need in changing it.  It’s not like he cares either way – he usually gets called Moose or Man or boydog anyway.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to blog our ordeal, but after reading the posts of the two other Corso owners I decided we needed another online for others that might find our stories useful. Here we go.

Nearly 3 weeks ago now Moose started limping with no known injury. Because he’s a 120 lb Mastiff and bone cancers are common in the big guys I took him in to have him checked out. We were hoping soft tissue but noticed a slight firm swelling above his right “wrist.” Two days of Rimadyl and tramadol didn’t touch the limping, so back we went for x-rays and they showed the bony tumor in that leg. I sat on the floor and cried. We did chest x-rays (clear), made consult appointments with oncology, and began trying to decide what is best to do for our boy and what is in our budget – I’m a grad student and my husband is the one working full time right now. Oncology at the nearby teaching vet school agreed with the initial assessment of osteosarcoma, but we wound need to get a consult with the soft tissue service about doing a front leg amputation on a boy of his size and shape. He has a big head and front end and a skinny little butt. Our oncology consult was on a Wednesday and he was still weight-bearing. The tumor was still hardly visible after about a week and a half.

By Friday, just two days later, it ballooned in size and he was no longer walking on it. I was shocked at how big the tumor got, practically overnight.

The weekend was awful. He got a fentanyl patch for the pain to get him through the weekend til our amputation consult appointment Monday. Fortunately they thought he would do fine so he had his amputation Tuesday morning. We brought him home this past Thursday evening, two days after surgery, and just two weeks after his x-rays. All things considered he’s in remarkable condition. We still have a bandage on him but he doesn’t really need it. The incision is both what I expected and shocking at the same time. The surgeons truly did a wonderful job. He’s been in to see his local vet, Dr. O, and she agrees he’s looking pretty good. He’s still awkward moving around and not quite his normal self, but he’s getting there more each day. We elected to not do the biopsy before the amputation because we figured amputation was likely and a biopsy wouldn’t change our course of action. The leg was sent off to the pathologist and the initial assessment on the lymph nodes is that they are clear of cancer. We are still trying to figure out if chemo is in our budget. But for now, I have Moose home again and I’ll try to blog his progress. We bought him one of the harnesses the folks on here rave about and once his incision gets a little more age on it we’ll give it a shot. He still has a lot of edema from the wound and I’m told this is normal and it will go away but I’m not sure how quickly that happens. Right now it kind of swings under his belly like an udder. Poor man.