I took him to another vet this morning. The doctor immediately looked concerned and asked a ton of questions. He took my concerns seriously. They did two x-rays and a biopsy.
Baxter has cancer.
They're sending the tissue samples to a local university for a pathologist to diagnose the type of cancer cells. He said that it could be benign and they may amputate the single toe. Worst case scenario is that it is a malignant melanoma, which has a 50/50 chance of survival. The prognosis for a malignant melanoma would be around one year of life.
The x-rays revealed that the cancer has not made it's way into the bone, indicating that I caught it in its early stages.
Needless to say, I'm a basket case. Baxter is my life. I've taken every precaution to keep him as healthy as possible. We go hiking and biking together, he eats a wide variety of the absolute best foods on the market (all grain free too!). I take him to Doggie Day Camp when I have to work long hours. I've had him for I guess about six years now and I'm 26 years old.
Baxter had pretty much been left in a cage for the first year of his life. The woman who had him said they're not sure if he'd ever even walked on grass. I spent the first few years socializing him and exposing him to positive experiences. He was very afraid of and reactive to other dogs. It took him a long time to trust even me.Every weekend we went to PetSmart and worked on pairing other dogs/people with warm bites of hot dogs. Six years later he is pretty much a normal dog and he likes playing with other dogs. He is my life.
Please keep us both in your thoughts.
These are a mix of old/new pictures. Don't worry, he has a car seat. |