It’s World Cancer Day – you might wonder why we ‘celebrate’ such a day, but this event is designed to raise awareness of cancer and to encourage its prevention, detection, and treatment.
As many of us sadly know, cancer can affect dogs too, so we want to share some inspiring stories with you as to how detection, treatment and sheer love and dedication has fought back against this awful disease.
Read on for Wally, Lady, Sherman and Feebee’s stories from their wonderful families.
Wally
“Wally came to me as a permanent foster for palliative care. He was 11 years old and came straight from the trainer in bad way. Had all his teeth removed, and to start with thought he had masticatory muscle myositis as his head was caved in a bit, but turned out he had brain tumour. He came to me to be given love in his last few months having never been in a home before. He lived with me for the following 3.5 years in which time he came off all the pain killers and was such a happy boy. I think that the change of life and his happiness put him into remission – at nearly 15 years old he died, when his back legs went and he could no longer get up.
Loved that boy so much.”
Louise
Lady
“My first lurcher Lady, had a soft tissue sarcoma in her front leg, which resulted in an amputation when she was 11 or 12 years old (she was a rescue, so we didn’t know her actual age) We didn’t do chemotherapy but she recovered well and lived another 18 months post surgery before she left for Rainbow Bridge. So, she was a good age for a hound that was found abandoned and malnourished by the roadside some 10+ years before!”
Vicki
Sherman
“Sherman who we rehomed from Forever Hounds Trust 6 years ago. He will be 13 on May 2nd and he kicked Cancers butt 2 years ago now.
I took him to the vet just after the first lock down that we had in the March as during that month a small cyst like lump appeared on his rear left leg just above his knee. The vet was dubious and took a biopsy the same day and it turned out to be a fast growing sarcoma.
We couldn’t believe how fast it had all started.
Within a week he was operated on. It was such an awkward narrow place of no spare skin, and the vet was concerned as he had to get as much of the leg tissue away as he could and apparently the tumor was deep.
It was a miracle that the results came back with clear margins.
It was a long healing process as the wound kept ripping open, Sherman was a star and let us clean it and dress it twice a day.
It was an ordeal for him and us, but I’m so thankful to our local vets who were so wonderful, the vet even admitted recently that he thought it would come back within 6 months as it was so deep and aggressive.
He’s our Forever Hound 
“
Kat
Feebee
“This is a bit of an ongoing story, with a few things to unpick still. But Feebee had a very rare and nasty melanoma removed which was in her eyeball. The good news is, it doesn’t appear to have metastasised. (At least not in the parts they scanned)!
Having one eye isn’t affecting her quality of life at all.”
Anna
Some inspiring stories here, of dogs that have, or are living a long an happy life despite being diagnosed with this awful disease. In Feebee’s case, the initial cancer was very quickly diagnosed and treated, and we are keeping everything crossed for her that she’s on the road to recovery. We send her, and her lovely mum lots of good wishes to ensure it continues that way.
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