Mater Boy

Hi friends! I’m changing things up today with an update on our sweet dog Mater instead of baby Reagan (don’t worry I’ll have an update on her sometime this week too!). In my last post I had said we found out Mater had TVT, essentially a dog STD that causes lesions and tumors which can become cancerous. Mater’s tumors have spread to him lymph nodes and are cancerous. Our new vet (who discovered it and *finally* made the diagnosis that multiple vets at our previous animal hospital couldn’t) planned on treating Mater at his small practice however apparently disposing of chemo chemicals is extremely expensive for someone who doesn’t administer it all the time – there are certain chemical disposal companies that bigger hospitals have accounts with, and of course at places like that you (the client) aren’t paying 100 percent of that cost on your own because there’s lots of other clients to spread the cost among. Our vet was even having a hard time just finding a company that’s would dispose of the chemicals for him alone, and considering how quickly TVT can advance on top of him knowing it would be much more expensive for him to treat it than a larger human hospital, he advised us to go to an Oncologist – VERY unlike our previous vet who would never have referred us to a specialist to save US money……..

Anyway, that’s how we wound up with an Oncologist vet, I called on Friday and got an appointment for yesterday, and the vet was definitely concerned with how much it had spread but still seemed hopeful that chemo could treat it because of how responsive TVT is to it (90-95 percent success rate). They expect to see basically immediate results – you can visibly see the tumors now so if the treatment works we’ll be able to see it also. She said it usually takes 4-6 rounds of the chemo, but it could be up to 8. So fingers crossed it only takes 4-6 because it ain’t cheap! He had his first round of treatment today, and it was really no big deal at all! Definitely nothing compared to chemo on humans. It took 30 minutes and now we can expect him to be a little tired, but he’s generally lethargic thanks to the TVT anyway, so we probably won’t notice much of a difference in his behavior until the TVT starts going away and he starts feeling better overall. We’ll go back in a week from today to check on his white blood cell count. If the chemo didn’t bring the count super low they’ll do another round of the chemo then, otherwise they’ll give it a little longer between treatments to let his white blood cell count bounce back.

After the appointment Mater’s primary concern was his baby sister. One of the many ways he’s just the sweetest boy!!!

Alright, I know that was a long winded update about a dog, but before I end this I just want this to basically serve as a warning for anyone reading this who has or will adopt a dog in San Diego. If you know me you know I’m a major adoption advocate, and I always will be. I don’t plan on ever not adopting animals in the future because of this either. But I was completely ignorant to TVT and with how close we are to Mexico, where this is a HUGE issue, it’s good to just be aware when adopting, obviously from organizations in Mexico but also organizations in San Diego because many of them pull animals out of the high kill shelters in the Imperial Valley, where dogs from Baja can easily wind up like we suspect Mater did (except we’ve tried speaking Spanish to him and he doesn’t know any, so who knows haha). According to the oncologist, TVT can essentially be dormant inside of a dog for their entire life and never become an issue if the dog is healthy because their immune system suppresses it. Mater unfortunately had a tick-borne disease called ehrlichia when we adopted him, which compromises their immune system until treated, so that could have been what made the TVT start growing. The old vet also prescribed oral steroids to Mater when they were trying (and failing) to figure out what was wrong with his eye, which the oncologist said also added fuel to the fire, helping the tumors to grow, and grow more rapidly. So anyway, please please please look into TVT if you have adopted a dog or adopt one in the future, from a San Diego or Baja rescue just so you can be on alert for the early signs. I can’t even begin to describe how much I’m kicking myself for not knowing about this because the signs were definitely there (which goes to show how horrible our old vet was also), and we might have a better shot at beating this if we’d started treating it earlier.

That’s all I got for today – a Reagan update will be up at some point in the next few days! It just takes careful planning to be able to sit down and make a post being completely on my own with her and the two dogs (Winnie is great, by the way!). David left for an underway on Sunday night and will be back next week.

Please keep us, and specifically Mater, in your prayers! Ideally the chemo will take care of the TVT, and we won’t even have to think about other options.

Thanks, y’all!