One of "my" "pups" (I do not own her but am her breeder; she will be 8 in September) has cancer. It is aggressive and initially I received word that she had histio - however, the lab report was not back yet. Then it turned out the sample was too bloody to evaluate. So poor Annie went to CSU and was aspirated again. This time the report came back not as histio, but as carcinoma. It is still bad news for Annie, but I am breathing a little easier for her relatives. However, it is still tearing me up. We had a little get-together with Annie and a few close-by littermates to celebrate her while she still feels good and looks good. Her owners' main concern is doing what is best for Annie. This is very hard on them and I think the best I can do for them, is gather some info on treatment experiences others have had - chemo, holistic, etc. They want to know how the treatments affect the dog's quality of life.
There is a tumor that is impacting her bowel activity. She has to go on vigorous walks in order to be able to eliminate. One of the options was to get a biopsy sample surgically, but then she would have had to be kept quiet for a week - which could have left her very uncomfortable. If she doesn't have much time left, her family wants it to be as high quality as possible - so they opted to not do that. They are very open to treatment, money is not an issue, quality of life is. She has had several ultrasounds and aspirate samples done. Out here in Colorado, a chemo treatment costs about $350 per treatment, I think they are about 3 weeks apart. I know there have been several posts about chemo lately and I am going to go dig those out of the archives. If anyone has had specific experience treating carcinoma, I would appreciate hearing from you. However, any cancer treatment options, and how well your dog tolerated the treatment, and how much time it bought, would be very appreciated as well. Eight years is just not long enough - and I know it is still longer than many of our Berners get, but I do not think I will ever be able to get used to losing dogs in the prime of their lives. Please, share info in Berner-Garde and help us breeders be able to make informed breeding decisions. These are not problems to hide under the carpet. (At Jean's Longlease site, I am personally impressed by the photos that include the dog's registered name.) I am preparing to breed Annie's niece and was devastated to possibly have histio that close, knowingly... so if I had known upfront that Tanzi had an aunt with histio I was going to be a little more strict on what amount of known histio I could deal with in the stud's pedigree, and possibly breed her to an older stud who did not have any littermates with histio. I don't plan all breedings that way, because histio is just one piece of the breeding puzzle. It is all about compromise. I am now back to being able to take a chance on a younger dog again! When you breed to a 2-year-old dog you can't predict how many of his littermates will still be around at age 7 - but when you have a low incidence of histio on the bitch's side I personally will take that risk. Tanzi's granddam is over 12 and I recently submitted a sample for the control group (dogs over 10 not diagnosed with histio) of the Fred Hutchinson study. We were prepared to send her daughter Annie's sample for the affected group, but at this time that appears to be unnecessary. Histio is basically lurking somewhere in all of our pedigrees, so it is not that I would never breed a dog with a "close" relative who had histio... just that if my bitch has a close relative with histio, I would not want to breed her to a dog whose sire/dam (for example)died of histio... and to be more certain about that, it would be necessary to breed her to an older stud whose own sire/dam was at least 9 years old, so far histio free... Again, there are really no absolutes, just methods for reducing but not eliminating risk... You have to give in on something because if you are not willing to compromise, you would not be able to breed! I realize some people think not breeding is the answer to all this misery, but I don't see how shrinking the gene pool solves anything long term. I have had a big reality check in the past few weeks, but one thing I know is I still want to go forward with breeding in my own small-scale way. Thanks for any treatment info you can send my way - Sharon Montville - Firstrax Bernese - Colorado Hailey, Zyla (Annie's sister), Blaze, Tanzi __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
