Female
lbs
12 years old
Stray
Good markings
Spayed
Up to date on Bordatella, Rabies,and 7 in 1 shots.
Heartworm/lyme/erlichia Negative!!!
CATS - not tested
Children - not tested
House trained - NO
Crate trained - yes
Other Dogs -
SPECIAL NEEDS - Annie has bone cancer

One of my all/mixed breed group friends asked us to take Annie once she was diagnosed with Cancer as they board their dogs in a kennel versus them being in a foster home setting. Since Annie is a Boston, how could I say no? Annie will need expensive meds and vet care. She will probably live her life out at one of my foster homes unless someone reads her story and wants to give her love and a home at the end of her life.

Annie was found as a stray around January 10th in Dallas. She's approximately 12 years old and was dirty, nails overgrown, very thin, HORRIBLE teeth (we had to pull most of them when we did her dental cleaning). Her teeth were so horrible that we had to do two separate dentals because she was having to stay under anesthesia for so long. Surprisingly, she was already spayed (there was no scar so we had to open her up to look, the doctor said the way things had been sewn up inside whenever she was spayed looked odd--something about a layer of tissue just being "gone", hard to explain what he meant...) and heartworm negative. I was surprised to say the least that someone had at least gotten her spayed since she looked so pathetic!

She'd been having loose stool so we've got her on some medication to get the diarrhea resolved, Odd thing is that she doesn't understand that it's okay to go outside, I almost picture her having been stuck in someone's house all the time or in a cage where she had to go wherever she happened to be. If she wasn't spayed I'd wonder if she hadn't been a backyard breeder mom or something.

Sweet little Annie has cancer. It's a type of bone cancer, and while the immediate prognosis is "favorable" (we removed the questionable bone--a piece of her spine, hard to describe without a visual picture but one of the pieces that curves off of the spine so can be removed without doing anything that would effect the spine itself--and sent it off for biopsy) there is a high risk of recurrence. They're predicting that she has anywhere between 6 months to 2 years left.

The reason we found out about the cancer is because she is VERY thin--and has had bloody diarrhea. Our initial thinking was that it was some type of intestinal cancer, causing her to not be able to absorb nutrients properly. But when we did the x-rays it was actually the spine where we saw a lesion. Right now we are feeding her a full can of canned food twice daily, and have her on pain medications because of the surgery as well as Fortiflora--it's a nutritional enzyme that we mix into her food to aid with digestion. Her stool has improved, but she is definitely not housetrained and goes in her cage (but she's doing better--kennel staff said today that she held it and was barking to let them know she needed to go outside). Unfortunately, she continues to lose weight. We're about to switch her over to a prescription diet that is geared towards animals with cancer to see if that will help .

Cynthia Westbrook DVM.
822 N. Grand Ave.
Gainesville, TX 76240

Thank you for your assistance for this sweet one.