Sunday, September 14, 2008

Tales From Tessie: Cancer Diagnoses

Today, we discovered that our beautiful Tessie has very limited time left with us. We rescued Tessie from a horrible life as a breeding dog in a puppy mill. Her cruel owners threw her over a 6 foot fence into a high kill animal shelter after she could no longer have puppies. She had no front teeth from chewing on the cage where she had been locked for years. We heard her plight and our rescue, Ariel Rescue saved her along with another husky male. We didn't know her exact age, but the veterinarians estimated her to be about 5-6 years old. That was only 3 years ago.

Tessie never had a lot of energy and tired easily. She had bursts of hyperactivity but for the most part has been a very mellow dog. Always, from the time we had her, there was a slight cough.....

For so long , we checked on the cough, had bloowork, XRAYs and really not much ever showed up. Through great nutrition, supplements and lots of love and patience, we transformed this ragamuffin into a beautiful dog (Tessie's before and after pictures can be seen on our Testimonials page). However, in the past 6 months, her cough progressed.
Pets often don't display their pain because of their survival instinct in the wild. We are so grateful we continued to follow through with the laboratory work and went back over/over until today we received our sad news: Tessie has cancer. Because the tumor is located around her heart, there is nothing that can be done from a conventional veterinary standpoint. The veterinarian said it is either canine chemodectoma or canine hemangiosarcoma but we may never know for sure. Of course, we will do all we can to keep Tessie comfortable using diet and supplements but the prognosis is bleak. We thought by sharing our heartbreaking story with others, that somehow, it might provde insight to all pet owners. We will provide regular updates to Tessie's tales and hope that by following our story, it will be helpful to you.