It now appears the Pecos has Oral Melanoma on his lower lip. We now have two dogs with cancer.
We took Pecos to the Vet last night to have her look at a growth on his lip. She did an aspiration for an official prognosis, but she’s pretty sure it’s Melanoma. He doesn’t seem to exhibit any other symptoms and his lymph nodes appear fine. Once she gets the results of the aspiration and does some consultation, she’ll be able to tell us how invasive the surgery will need to be. Right now the thought is the surgery to remove the growth, which, as she put it, is barely attached to his lip, will be easily done in the Vet’s office. If things look worse than that, the surgery could be more involved, removing some of his lip, and in worst case, some of his jaw.
But we’ll see.
We’re at the beginning of this story, so we don’t know where it’s going to lead. The Vet talks about a “vaccine” for Melanoma in dogs, mentioned here:
The USDA conditionally licensed a vaccine in 2007 that could potentially treat canine melanomas. The vaccine causes the immune system to attack and reject tumor cells, prolonging overall survival times. However, research on this vaccine’s effectiveness is ongoing.
But the more often mentioned treatment is radiation and/or chemo.
I’m SO sorry to hear about Yuki and Pecos. wow. That’s just gotta be tough. I wonder if its the water or something in the ground. who knows? My neighbors have a dog like Dandy. They could be twins. The neighbor’s dog digs too…but only to get a cool spot. You will be excited to know that my Son, Ty and his wife Mary got a dog… German Shepherd / Great Pyrenees cross. So.. its a VERY white German shepherd with the usual very BLACK German Shepherd markings. Her name is Luna and she’s a real sweetheart.
That’s gonna be a big dog!