Hello,
Our boy Petie become a tripod Tuesday January 16th.
I just feel horrible about what he went through,
but I knew he'd be a great three-legged dog.
Ok, about Petie, he's our wiggly, beautiful Boxer boy!
He's about 6 years old.
We got him from a rescue just over three years ago,
and he was supposed to be around 2-2.5 years old at the time.
We like to think he was closer to 2 then 2.5.
Anyway, he had a leg that had many scars all over it,
and it was anybody's guess to how he got all the scars.
He was a rescue and had a few different previous lives,
so we thought it could have been a dogfight, a fight with a fence or car???
Just over three years ago, Petie found his forever home with us.
He's been a happy part of our family.
We've lived by the ocean, and for that time the beach belonged to him.
He's been on MANY camp trips, hikes, excursions, you name it,
whatever it is that we have done in the past three years, Petie has been a part of it.

June of 2006 we took Petie for his routine check up, for his shots etc.
The vet saw a spot on Petie that she found to be concerning.
She tested it, and it turned out to be a mast cell tumor.
After Petie came home, we were getting ready to go on a camp trip.
During the trip I found another spot that looked exactly like the one that the vet found. SOOOOO we made the appointment to have his first surgery (with us, anyway).
It turned out they were both mast cell tumors,
but only Grade 1 tumors
(grade 1 are still cancerous but a low grade, so they don't require Chemo, etc.).
We had them removed, and he had to heal.
The tumor that I found happened to be on his back left leg
(the one with all the scars),
and in a place that didn't have a lot of skin.
They couldn't close it up, so it was a difficult wound to heal,
and needless to say he had to wear the satellite collar for about 8 weeks, and a visit to the vet every other day until it was completely closed all on it's own.

It seemed like it was overnight,
but about a month before his surgery we noticed a different bump on his same scarred leg, along with a few more bumps on other parts of his body that looked exactly like the other grade 1 spots that were removed previously.
The one on his leg was large, and grew fast, and was under the skin
(something new that didn't look like the rest).
We took him in, the vet did another surgery on his poor leg,
and sent it in to be tested.
This tumor wasn't a grade 1,
it was a nasty grade 2 tumor.
The vet also thought that the other scars on his leg
looked like previous surgeries,
and could have possibly been from previous mast cell tumors that have been removed.
The leg had so much scar tissue, and the tumor grew back so quickly, that the vet said that our best option would be to remove the leg.
This was a very hard decision,
but we would do anything we could to save our poor boy,
so we decided to move forward and have his back left leg removed.
Before his surgery I found your site,
and I was happy to read all the stories about all the tripod dogs.
It gave me hope.
My only concern is that he's a cancer dog,
so I'm worried about tumors coming back in other parts of his body.
That is a reality that we have to be prepared for,
but for now, we're doing what we can to give him a longer happier, better quality life.

Ok, about his progress since we picked him up last night from the vet.
Petie walked his little cute round butt
(by the way, the vet left his cute butt,
I was worried, but he still has his butt, they removed the leg below the hip) out of the vet.
It was a little bit of a challenge to get him in the car, but he did ok.
He has been tender, he's yelped a few times when we've helped him lay down.
He can do it on his own, but sometimes it's a little hard.
He can go down the few stairs to go out to go potty.
He can climb them to come in, but going up the stairs is a little harder for him.
At times when I take him out on the leash to go potty, I have to slow him down, 'cause he almost runs.
Today for a minute it almost looked like he had four legs, from the way he was trotting along.
He was in pain, I'm not going to candy coat that.
I really hated to see him in pain, but I knew that he'd heal fast,
and he'd be running and bouncing around again really soon.
I'll send updates as time goes by, along with more photos.
Thanks for this website,

Stacy, Johannes & Petie
San Francisco Bay, CA
Friday March 16, 2007

My name is Abe
(or Whisperwind's Honest Abe CD, if you want to be formal)
and I am a 6 year old Flat-coated Retriever living in Brentwood, TN.

I was diagnosed in January 2007 with a Soft Tissue Sarcoma in my right front leg. The vet couldn't remove the whole tumor because of it's consistency so my Mom took me to Ohio State University which is doing a cancer study on Flat-coats to see if they could help me. They wanted to amputate my leg then but Mom didn't want that done at the time. She tried everything (including acupuncture) but nothing worked and eventually the tumor got so large that my Mom knew that if we didn't amputate the leg, I would die.

My leg was removed Friday, March 9, 2007.
I came home from the vet hospital the next day and have been feeling great.

I still take antibiotics, pain medications, vitamins
(Ester C, Fish Oil, Flaxseed Oil, and B Vitamins)
and Noni Juice Caplets, but I am eating very well,
and have managed on three legs wonderfully!!!!

Here is a picture of me in my soft E-collar which keeps me from chewing on my incision, a shot of me looking quite adorable, and a good close-up where you can see the incision...
and my other leg shaved for the IV fluids and stuff.
More photos once the hair grows back!

Abe
Sunday March 18, 2007