Puppy Problems

It seems that BigGaloot is having some health concerns.

A couple of weeks ago Shrike was being "overly protective and paranoid" (I thought) and took him to the vet to see why his nose looks chapped all the time.

The tentative diagnosis was discoid lupus or "collie nose" which is, as you would assume, an autoimmude disease, but it only affects the skin. He had it biopsied last week, and the vet called today with the path report.

It is discoid lupus, which should be controlled with topic anti-inflammatory and sunscreen. He might need antibiotics and steriods from time to time if it flares up, but other than that, it shouldn't be a big deal.

A bigger deal, though is that during the surgery for the nose, she found a "mass" in his mouth, near his upper gum, way in the back, I believe. She biopsied it but told us that she expected it to be something with big words that's benign.

Turns out it's, same big words somethingelse-blastoma, which is not so benign.

But although it is invasive - it spreads locally - it is not metastatic - it doesn't spread to other parts of the body, which is much better news than it night have been.

Given our options, we're thinking the smart thing is to get xrays (under anesthesia) and see if it's spread into the bone, in which case a bit of the maxilla (upper jawbone) will need to be removed.

I don't know if we can knock him out, xray, then while he's still under, go ahead and cut out what needs to come out or if it will necessarily be separate procedures.The path report says she didn't get it all with the biopsy, so seems to me something needs to come out, even if it's just soft tissue, or we will just be waiting for it to go into the bone and then remove it, which seems dumb. We're hoping we can just do it all at once, for his sake and the sake of our bank account.

If we did nothing, it would erode the maxilla, he'd lose teeth, be susceptible to infections, I would assume it would be painful eventually. She didn't have a timeline on that, because she's always done the surgery, and she says that they do very well afterwards; you can't tell by looking at them, she's got one who's now chomping on milkbones, etc.

He goes back next week to have the stitches removed from his nose, and we'll discuss it all with her in more detail then.

I'll update when we know more.