She was spread out on the floor, grey as a badger all over her head and front legs, a happy old staffie. I\’d been seeing her for nearly a year, and had helped her through more problems than I have fingers to point them out. She just kept on going! The last visit had been a worry – her mum had found a lump in her mammary glands, and it was growing quickly. I\’d had her into the veterinary hospital, with the intention to operate on it. The x-rays had shown a suspicious shadow on her lungs, so we decided that it was likely that there was another lump growing in there. This meant that surgery wasn\’t an option. Instead, we decided to give her a go on herbal treatment. I\’ve had some good success with tumours shrinking when treating dogs with a new herbal blend made by a good friend of mine, just down the road.
\”How\’s she going?\” I asked.
\”Oh, she seems really good, actually, she\’s playful and happy,\” her mum said.
\”And how about the lump?\” I asked.
\”I don\’t want to say anything until you look at it,\” she replied, nervously.
So I gently rolled her over, and picked up the lump to have a feel of it. It was the size of a small apple, or a big lime, and it felt a bit less uneven than the last time I\’d palpated it. I had a good feel, making sure I wasn\’t fooling myself. It definitely felt different, and I thought it was a fraction smaller, though I couldn\’t be sure. One thing I could be sure of was that it had certainly stopped getting bigger!
\”Well,\” I said. \”I reckon it might be a fraction smaller, but it\’s hard to tell. Certainly it\’s stopped growing, and seeing how quickly it was getting bigger, that\’s a really good sign. I think we should keep on with the same treatment, and I\’ll come back every 2 weeks to see how she\’s going?\”
\”I\’m really happy with how she\’s responding to the treatment,\” the old dog\’s mum said. \”She seems so much happier and more lively, too, so much more playful. I just want her to keep going as long as she can, you know, as long as she isn\’t suffering.\”
\”There doesn\’t seem to be much suffering going on here,\” I said, as I looked at her, legs in the air, gently snoring away. \”I reckon she\’s one of the best looked after dogs in Australia. How shes responding to this treatment is really promising. I\’ve only used this herbal medicine in one other dog, and his lumps have shrunk a lot over three months. But I don\’t have much of a database, it\’s very new to me. I\’m cautiously excited, and we\’ll just have to keep an eye on it over the next couple of months.
\”Yes, we\’ll see you in two weeks!\” she replied.