Yorkies and cancer

[spikecarson]

hello everyone, i was just reviewing the postings for any information on yorkies and cancer but don't see much in the way of this disease and our wonderful yorkies. I had the unfortunate news saturday, november 8th that my little man, spike, had cancer. i no longer have my boy as he was too ill to continue his very happy life with me and his sisters.
i write this so that some symptoms do not go ignored for any of you.
Saturday november 8th, we woke up as usual. Spike went outside for his usual morning routine. when he came back in with his 3 sisters (border collie, bichone, german shorthaired pointer), i gave out the breakfast biscuits. Spike didn't eat...wow i said, he always eats his biscuits, i decided to try a little cream cheese to see what might be wrong as he didn't look right and kept getting up and down off of his bed and looking at me. He didn't want cream cheese...i said something is wrong...he was perfect last nite....ate his meal, watched tv with us, played as usual...he's a chubby little man at 15 pounds....but built so he's very muscle-like.....i made an appointment at the vet that morning, he had a high fever, they gave him a shot of antibiotic and pills but said to do bloodwork to make sure there's not an issue...bloodwork said "highly anemic" - oh no...he just laid on my lap doing nothing.....the vet said this is not good having anemia so we'll do an xray to rule out internal bleeding - they called me in and there it was, a huge mass in his chest by his upper lung and probably attached to his heart....they say this is inoperable...they felt terrible...i couldn't contain myself...i just lost my other border collie last year to cancer (hemangiosarcoma). i was devastated...i took him home crying all the way and hoped his fever would get better as i made an appointment at Oradell hospital in bergen NJ as they are cancer specialists and said they will do a sonogram to see if there was anything they can do for him....by nightfall, his fever was 105.6! i rushed him to Oradell ER and they placed him in an oxygen tent...they said he's too weak to do any tests and if i take him home he will die as his breathing started to be short and quick...then his little stomach started to expand and they said they were almost positive he was bleeding into his spleen/stomach and that the end is near....at this point when a dog has cancer, there really is nothing you can do...i learned this the hard way with my border collie..she had tumors on her liver/kidney and spleen...and they told me a couple of months for her and she died 5 days later one nite in bed...just lifted her head, looked at me and stopped breathing........for spike, the vet did not tell me what i should do, they just kept asking, what do you want to do...they weren't suggesting anything like surgery or chemo or anything....they just kept saying what would you like to do again......the doctor said she never really tells folks but she said your little guy is very very sick and most likely will not live through the nite...i did the best i could and cried and cried while i held him in my arms and they gave him the shot that ended our lives together. my beautiful boy was gone but i continued to hold him for another 1/2 hour until they came in the room......i'm still crying now, i'm still devasted....i don't think i can ever recover from this huge loss in my life...my happy boy who waited for me anytime i left the house is no longer there for me to love and hug so tight....

Yorkies i guess don't normally get cancer - at least i cannot find anywhere on the web where there were any answers on yorkies and tumors/cancers. He slowed down a bit these last few months but i attributed it to maybe his age (he'd would have been 10 next month). he was coughing a bit more but he always coughed...he would cough after licking/cleaning his front paws.... he always ate and did his business so i never in a million years thought this wonderful little boy had a life threatening disease hidden away in his body.

i just wanted to share this information with other yorkie owners that if you do notice anything unusual with your yorkie, please do the bloodwork, do the x-rays in hopes that if anything horrible is lurking you have time enough to catch it and maybe fix it..don't wait for any of his/her issues to pass with time.....i had only 12 hours that day with my little man and only 2 hours of knowing i'd never see him again. my heart is broken. i hope one day in the future, the 6 month blood tests we do when they get a bit older includes a test for the possibility of cancer. thank you for listening. jenny - spike's momma

[AshasMom]

Thank you so much for sharing your story. I am so sorry for your loss, but hopefully your sharing will save another fur baby's life.

[Patti]

I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your precious Spike. He sounded like a special little guy.

[Sandysbabies]

I am so sorry for your loss. Believe me I know what you are going through. We have a yr. old yorkie, and 2 female schnauzers. My oldest little girl has cancer. They gave her 1mo. to live. That was the first of Oct. She has the cough too. Its in her lungs, neck, spleen. Every morning I pray for this baby. I love her sooo much. She is still eating and seems okay. She is even running and playing some. We are not going to give up on her but at the same time I am not going to put her through chemo. She is 13 and I am hoping we have another Christmas with her. Will keep you in our thoughts and prayers, I know how hard it is. We lost our male schnauzer to diabetes last yr.

[spikecarson]

thank you all for you thoughts about spike. it's hard to get through the days. sandysbabies, i hope your little girl makes it through the holidays for you. i think not doing the chemo is the right thing to do...at this stage, the chemo really can't help them especially when the cancer is in multiple places. if i thought i could do anything for spike i would have but they said even if they could, he wouldn't last another month....they say many dogs owners are told their dogs will get 2-4 months with surgery and chemo but mostly the dogs pass within a couple of weeks so i didn't want spike to have to go through all that pain for another couple of weeks. we always think we'll have our babies with us forever but it's hard when they leave us especially when they are still young. thanks again. jenny

[bchgirl]

I am so sorry for your loss of Spike and thank you for sharing your story.

As dogs age many of them do, indeed, get various cancers. It's not rare.

[TresCutePiggies]

I'm so sorry to hear about your sweet little baby Spike. I hope all the wonderful memories you have of him can comfort you in this very difficult time. I'm sure the entire family (furry ones included) are missing him terribly.

My bullmastiff passed away from lymphoma last year, but I was lucky enough to be able to treat him with chemo for nearly two GREAT years. He was 6 when he was diagnosed and passed away just before his 8th birthday. I think this is much more common in the large breeds. I will say that he had just had his annual check-up at the vet with no problems just two weeks before we rushed him to the ER vet and got his initial cancer diagnosis. The lymphoma presented itself in his eyes and he did lose vision in one of them. I often wonder had they caught it at that annual check-up if his vision would have been saved.

[TLC]

I am so sorry for your loss....

Your love for your little man shines through your posts. Thank you for sharing his life with us

[Baron]

This was like reading what I just went through with one of my guys. He also was 10, and had never been sick through his life, but he started acting funny, and his urine turned a brownish yellow, and we took him into the vt right away. They did an X-Ray, which showed a large mass in his chest/stomach area, then did the blood work and he was very anemic. They did surgery to see, and found it was cancer that was attached to many of his internal organs. That was late august, when I picked him up they told me that it was very likely to reoccur and they did not know how long he would live. By the beginning of Oct he was again showing signs of anemia, and when we took him in, they tried blood transfusion, and drugs, but nothing worked. We had to let him go. It just devistated me. They did not know what caused it. I have his sister, and she is just fine right now. They said there was nothing I could have done to prevent it, it is just like some people, they just get it.

Originally Posted by spikecarson

hello everyone, i was just reviewing the postings for any information on yorkies and cancer but don't see much in the way of this disease and our wonderful yorkies. I had the unfortunate news saturday, november 8th that my little man, spike, had cancer. i no longer have my boy as he was too ill to continue his very happy life with me and his sisters.
i write this so that some symptoms do not go ignored for any of you.
Saturday november 8th, we woke up as usual. Spike went outside for his usual morning routine. when he came back in with his 3 sisters (border collie, bichone, german shorthaired pointer), i gave out the breakfast biscuits. Spike didn't eat...wow i said, he always eats his biscuits, i decided to try a little cream cheese to see what might be wrong as he didn't look right and kept getting up and down off of his bed and looking at me. He didn't want cream cheese...i said something is wrong...he was perfect last nite....ate his meal, watched tv with us, played as usual...he's a chubby little man at 15 pounds....but built so he's very muscle-like.....i made an appointment at the vet that morning, he had a high fever, they gave him a shot of antibiotic and pills but said to do bloodwork to make sure there's not an issue...bloodwork said "highly anemic" - oh no...he just laid on my lap doing nothing.....the vet said this is not good having anemia so we'll do an xray to rule out internal bleeding - they called me in and there it was, a huge mass in his chest by his upper lung and probably attached to his heart....they say this is inoperable...they felt terrible...i couldn't contain myself...i just lost my other border collie last year to cancer (hemangiosarcoma). i was devastated...i took him home crying all the way and hoped his fever would get better as i made an appointment at Oradell hospital in bergen NJ as they are cancer specialists and said they will do a sonogram to see if there was anything they can do for him....by nightfall, his fever was 105.6! i rushed him to Oradell ER and they placed him in an oxygen tent...they said he's too weak to do any tests and if i take him home he will die as his breathing started to be short and quick...then his little stomach started to expand and they said they were almost positive he was bleeding into his spleen/stomach and that the end is near....at this point when a dog has cancer, there really is nothing you can do...i learned this the hard way with my border collie..she had tumors on her liver/kidney and spleen...and they told me a couple of months for her and she died 5 days later one nite in bed...just lifted her head, looked at me and stopped breathing........for spike, the vet did not tell me what i should do, they just kept asking, what do you want to do...they weren't suggesting anything like surgery or chemo or anything....they just kept saying what would you like to do again......the doctor said she never really tells folks but she said your little guy is very very sick and most likely will not live through the nite...i did the best i could and cried and cried while i held him in my arms and they gave him the shot that ended our lives together. my beautiful boy was gone but i continued to hold him for another 1/2 hour until they came in the room......i'm still crying now, i'm still devasted....i don't think i can ever recover from this huge loss in my life...my happy boy who waited for me anytime i left the house is no longer there for me to love and hug so tight....

Yorkies i guess don't normally get cancer - at least i cannot find anywhere on the web where there were any answers on yorkies and tumors/cancers. He slowed down a bit these last few months but i attributed it to maybe his age (he'd would have been 10 next month). he was coughing a bit more but he always coughed...he would cough after licking/cleaning his front paws.... he always ate and did his business so i never in a million years thought this wonderful little boy had a life threatening disease hidden away in his body.

i just wanted to share this information with other yorkie owners that if you do notice anything unusual with your yorkie, please do the bloodwork, do the x-rays in hopes that if anything horrible is lurking you have time enough to catch it and maybe fix it..don't wait for any of his/her issues to pass with time.....i had only 12 hours that day with my little man and only 2 hours of knowing i'd never see him again. my heart is broken. i hope one day in the future, the 6 month blood tests we do when they get a bit older includes a test for the possibility of cancer. thank you for listening. jenny - spike's momma

[pinkhouses86]

I'm so sorry for your loss, thank you for sharing your story. RIP Spike.

[jeanietoo]

I'm very sorry to hear of your yorkie passing. My T.J. had surgery in June 2007 for cancer of the intestine. His biopsy came back with a guarded prognosis and he was expected to live only a few months but he is doing pretty well right now. I will take every day I have with him and when and if the cancer returns I will have him put down. I don't want him to suffer any longer than necessary. I'm glad we have this choice for our beloved pets.

[jerryboo]

Its amazing the pain that can be felt watching our little ones struggle with a disease. Ours has GME . 4year old female.Its been a long road. But we will fight as long as she does.The thought of life without her just doesn't seem fair.And I'm a 49 year old male. On yorkietalk.com. Pretty bad shape. My heart goes out to you,and my God be with you during this difficult time.

Jerry

[Sugar's Mom]

I am so sorry for your loss of Spike. I have a female yorkie that has mammary cancer. So far she is doing well. At this point, I am just going to give her all the love and care she needs.

[spikecarson]

I can't thank you all enough....i keep returning to this site as i find it comforting to know all of those folks who care about what happened to our family. losing spike has cut whatever "happy" out of my life....i feel that all i do for the last two weeks is cry....i don't find anything happy or amusing in life at all but at least coming here and reading posts really helps knowing that there are others out there in the same situation or have been through the same devastating thing.
we'll get through this, i know someday.

thanks to all - j, j, peaches, chessa and gracie

[TLC]

Originally Posted by spikecarson

I can't thank you all enough....i keep returning to this site as i find it comforting to know all of those folks who care about what happened to our family. losing spike has cut whatever "happy" out of my life....i feel that all i do for the last two weeks is cry....i don't find anything happy or amusing in life at all but at least coming here and reading posts really helps knowing that there are others out there in the same situation or have been through the same devastating thing.
we'll get through this, i know someday.

thanks to all - j, j, peaches, chessa and gracie

I am so glad you found YT

I am from NJ (Rockaway) but have been living on Long Island since 96

I hope in time, your pain will heal and you will be able to open your home and your heart for another little fella. You sound like a wonderful Mommy and there are so many in need of a good home

I often look at the rescue sites as it gives me smiles to know they are being loved One of my favorites is Rescue Me Yorkie Rescue ~ Maybe one day, you'll be ready and I have faith that your little man will give a sign of his approval, as he loves you dearly and truly wants you to be happy