aphillippi

I have 2 dogs currently. Crunchy is the red and white. He will be 5 in a few months and is the sweetest little guy. He had a growth plate disorder when he was just 14 weeks we found it. Thankfully he pulled through. He loves to play fetch and would play all day if he could. Unfortunately he doesn't have much stamina during play. I think it may be a side effect of his disorder. I'm sure he would make a great fly ball dog otherwise. Nanuke my heart dog is the black and white. He is border collie and collie mix. He just had surgery to remove a large tumor. He is 12.5 and is the guardian of is flock (human family) he checks on my 3 boys every night. He loves frisbee and still thinks he is 2.

Just picked Nanuke up and he is in great spirits already trying to go out to play.

Sorry for your loss and to have brought her up. 17 is awesome. Our sweet krispie got out of the fence (neighbors side) some how she managed to pull a board loose and ran. Before we could find her she was hit by a car. It was very tragic for us. Unfortunately she was too badly injured. We never left the dogs in the yard unattended more than a few minutes to potty. But that's all it takes. We named her krispie because the little boy of the farmer we got her from had already named her. We thought it was fitting.

Thanks everyone! Julie every time I see your pic with all your border collies I can't help but stare at your tri color on the bottom right! It looks exactly like one my husband and I had! She was truly one of the most fun dogs we ever had. Our oldest son loved her to pieces. She was definitely my husband's heart dog. It's be 5 years and we can still barely mention her name in our house.

Thanks for the thoughts. We decided to go ahead with the tumor removal simply due to its darn size and feeling he would be more comfortable. Surgery was today and went well. They removed what they could and did some debulking they couldn't remove the whole thing because it had grown into his muscle. It definitely wasn't just your average fatty tumor. We will pick him up tomorrow as long as he does well over night and go from there.

We are going to do xrays tomorrow morning and go from there. I've asked my vet what she would do and her response was to remove before it gets any bigger. I have been using her for a long time and trust her judgment. She has always had my animals best interest at heart and never been one to sell me unnecessary services. She didn't come to this conclusion without consulting other doctors thank goodness. For right now my sweet boy is being extremely spoiled with his orthopedic bed and favorite squeaky friends. He has the expression that he isn't ready to give up on me. So I won't give up on him either. Kstate would by far be our greatest option but it's a good 3 hours from us.

Thanks for the sympathy. All the points you raise about it's location and whether or not it's already spread are exactly why I can't wrap my brain around removing it. We don't have an oncologist in our area and my pocket book can't afford it right now. They want to biopsy it once it's been removed. Vet is sure it's cancer due to the rapid growth and color of fluid when they aspirated it. It's a solid mass with pockets of fluid. They did suggest doing an xray which we haven't done yet. We decided to find out how his labs looked first. I was just in shock by the news when I took him to get it aspirated.

Hi everyone, I have a border collie/collie mix who was diagnosed with cancer yesterday. Now my husband and I are trying to decide what to do. He is 12.5 and has a very large tumor on his neck. We have had it checked twice before now but it recently doubled in size. Vet didn't want to touch it before due to the risk of where it is. In May he had a bout of vestibular disease and recovered very well. He is still energetic for a dog his age. He can manage to play fetch for 10-15 minutes maybe longer depending on the heat. So now we are faced with what to do. The vet has obviously given me 2 options. Let him live out his life as comfortable as we can and pray the darn thing won't rupture or remove as much of it as possible. Given where it is they may not be able to remove the whole thing if any. His blood work came back today and for his age the vet says it is remarkable. His liver enzymes were slightly elevated but she said not high enough to be a red flag. My heart tells me to go forth with the surgery but my brain tells me no. I'm concerned that if we do the surgery he might not heal well or recover. With his age I know it won't be easy for him. Yet I know every day I wait the darn thing is growing larger and possibly spreading. He has always been such a stoic boy and I'm sure he is uncomfortable yet never shows it. I'm just curious how well other's senior dogs recovered after having tumor removal. How well did it heal and how long did it take?

Vet is pretty sure it is HOD but we are checking all possibilities because he killed a mole a few weeks ago and had eatten some of it before I discovered it. It has been sent to K State and we won't know the results until next week. I have no idea what strains are in my area. I will not be vaccinating him any time soon and I almost wonder if the boosters he recieved a few weeks ago made him worse. He was showing no signs of this until last week or we would have waited on any vaccines.

I've been freaking out about lepto since I took Crunchy to the vet yesterday. We had the blood drawn and sent off but we won't know the results until next week. I'm worried about the possibility of my kids getting it if he does have it. I'm going to talk to the vet about this vaccine once Crunchy is better.

So I've been told. He is a full blooded border collie.

Does anyone have any experiece with this? My 5 month old Crunchy has just been diagnosed with it. He has been having horrible pain in all four legs and had a fever. It started last week and I took him to the vet. They put him on an antibiotic and said if he wasn't feeling better in a few days to bring him back for more testing. He did great over the weekend playing like his normal self and all then Monday he started having problems walking again. They did x-rays and a slew of blood work. We won't get the results on the blood work until the end of the week. She is pretty sure Crunchy has HOD and is hoping it will be a mild case. I've work for vets and seen a lot of things I've had a dog with Addison's Disease. I'm just really freak out about this and what it is going to do to him. It just broke my heart watching my labx slowly wither away and having to make the decision to let her go. But she was older and this is just breaking me up considering he is only 5 months old.

Crunchy is 4 months also and I've had similar problems. He did great for about a week and only had an accident once or twice. Then he starting having accidents in the house again and I had to go back to square one also. I made a big deal out of it and gave him a treat every time he went out to potty. Then he got smart and thought just because he went outside he needed a treat even if he didn't do anything. He would run straight to the cabinet where the treats are. Now he is back to doing pretty well in the house but his crate is another story. Every night I get up and take him out but he keeps pooping in there. He barks one time and before I can get to him to let him out he has gone. Then he steps in it while I'm trying to get him out. I'm just trying to be patient with him because I've had pups that were completely trained in a week and others who took 8 months. Every puppy is different and they will figure it all out eventually.

I used to work in a groom shop and I was constantly triming dogs nails. I guess you just get used to it. Black nails always seem to get a black spot in the middle when you've cut them to just the right place. My cat is usually pretty good but I don't trim them very often because she only has her back ones.

Maybe I should try this potty box thing with Crunchy for his kennel. He is pretty good about whining when he needs out but in the middle of the night I don't always get out of bed fast enough and then today I was gone a little longer than I had planned running errands. Well that boy has a sensitive stomach and my toddler put a kong with treats in his kennel that wasn't supposed to be for him. The poor pup had poop every where and had to have a bath. His stomach is still upset.