Aussie's Story

Aussie is the sweetest and coolest dog I know. She's an Australian Shephard mix that my husband and I were lucky enough to find at the SPCA 12 years ago. She stole my heart the moment I saw her. Even though I wasn't supposed to put my hand in the cage, I reached in and she rested her head in my hand. She looked at me with big brown eyes that begged me to take her home. How could I resist? The last 12 years have been filled with a lot of rubs, tennis balls, chew bones, walks, and a lot of happiness. The last two years have been filled with a lot of vet visits.

For two years we've been fighting arthritis and thanks to acupuncture, chinese herbs, diet and exercise she's doing great. She still loves to go for walks everyday, to play catch with the tennis ball and is the most energetic 13 year old dog I know. At the end of August; however, her behavior started to change a bit. She started peeing in the house which she hadn't done since we first brought her home 12 years ago. When she would go outside, she would squat about ten times at each outing. We knew something was wrong. So we made an appointment with our vet.

After an ultrasound, we discovered that Aussie had Transitional Cell Carcinoma. The big C-word had invaded our pup's bladder. Cancer. Two syllables we never wanted to hear, but now that it's part of our life, we have no choice but to fight back. We have fortunately caught it early and it has not metasticized. Our vet put her on piroxicam and two chinese herbs: stasis breaker and wei qi booster. She said to cut out the carbs and any sugar because cancer thrives on those two things. She suggested we start cooking her food, instead of the Merrick canned food we were giving her. We now cook all of our dog's food, which just puts us one step closer to being crazy dog people, but we're okay with that. Our vet referred us to an internist to get another ultrasound to determine the exact placement of the tumor and get a definitive diagnosis.

The internist confirmed the mass was about 3mm in size, located in the mid-upper right section of the bladder. It's not in the worst position, but not quite in the "best" position. He suggested keeping her on piroxicam and doing chemo. He said if we just stayed on the piroxicam we were looking at a 6-9 month response time. And yes, by "response time" he meant how long she would live. We loved those semantics. He said if we did chemo, we could double that time. Chemo sounded so harsh and our vet was studying in China for two weeks, so we didn't know what to do. She uses an integrative healing method and we couldn't believe she would want us to go through with chemo, considering the results of the biopsy came back as "abnormal cells, but stopping just short of calling it cancer." However, TCC apparently has a very characteristic appearance and the internist said we should still go through with the chemo. We had chemo scheduled, but couldn't go through with it without talking to our vet.

We checked with the internist and ensured that waiting 10 more days would not be critical to the outcome, so we waited until our vet returned. For big decisions like this, we wanted to work with our vet who knows our dog and knows us. Our vet returned and after much consideration, we are starting a 5 week treatment with a medicine called Neoplasene tomorrow. Aussie will be sedated and catheterized and the medicine will be delivered directly to the bladder. She will go in two times a week for 5 weeks. We've read some case studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of this treatment and we are extremely hopeful this will work.

The purpose of this blog is to document the whole experience. We will note Aussie's diet, exercise, and behavior each day on the treatment. We will note the dates of all treatments and ultrasounds and the results. Our hope is that this blog will help others dealing with the same situation.

I will admit we've cried quite a bit and lost a lot of sleep over this, but we know that's not going to change anything. We're being positive and doing everything we can to ensure Aussie stays as healthy and happy as she can through this. We joined the National Canine Cancer Foundation and we have a pink paw magnet we keep on our refrigerator. We hit it everyday to remind us that we are putting the smack down on this tumor. Stay tuned. We're keeping our fingers and our paws crossed that tomorrow and the next 5 weeks go as well as they can.