It's been a rough couple of months here at Kaos. Abby, Grandma's rescue and one of the sweetest darn dogs we have, had a lump biopsied off of her shoulder....benign. Phew! Then Ryder had a lump come up suddenly on his wrist...again, benign. Waiting for the histo reports is a game of preparing for the worst and hoping against hope for the best. In both cases, all of the preparing paid off and we were rewarded with the good news.
Then, last week Grandma said something along the lines of "Abby's got another lump...on her tongue." Well, it didn't take a lot of research to learn that 9 times out of 10, lumps in the mouth are cancer. There, I said it. Abby's probably got cancer. What can we do? Well, they could cut through and remove a huge chunk of the tongue. Would they get it all? Probably not...the lump goes under and into the muscle in the mouth. Radiation? Yeah, that'd kill some cancer cells, that's for sure.
But what's best for Abby? Does this rescue dog, of indeterminate age, who already has kidney issues need more surgery and radiation? Is allopathic medicine where we're going to turn for treatment? She may live longer...but is her quality of life going to be the better for it? I know these are questions that every dog owner has to wrestle with when they find out their much loved pet has cancer...and it happens so much more often than it should. It's been years since we had our Nikki, Sasha and Tasha lessons. But, we learned them.
Abby's going to be kept comfortable and we're turning to our homeopath for treatment. Whether the cancer can be cured or not, we don't know...she's done it before with other peoples' animals.
What we do know is that Abby came to us for a reason, she needed something from us. She must have found it. Somewhere between snarling at every dog in the house and learning to accept petting, grooming and scratches and giving out the sweetest dang kisses ever, Abby found what she needed here at Kaos. Running and jumping at the doors, insisting on her walk anytime a leash appears and jumping into the car as if a ride in the car is the best darn thing in the world Abby is one of the pack. She adores Blaze, her red boy, and plays with him like he was her best buddy...and he is. Maybe it was just time for us to take a refresher course in Unconditional Love 101...although I think we're actually moving into graduate work this time.
So, we have to go down that road again...hopefully not for a while, as she's happy, not in pain or discomfort and just Abby. But when we start to lose the essence of Abby, it'll be time again to wish one of our dogs an easy journey to their spot North of the Rainbow Bridge. I don't even like Abby...she's not my dog. She's Grandma's. I'm not getting attached to anymore stinkin' rescues...I'm not I tell you...at least not after this one!
