Our beautiful, beautiful springer has cancer - aggressive growths affecting the soft tissue and bone in both her shoulders. She's nearly 13 but she's always been so active - six weeks ago she was chasing squirrels in the park like a pup. She developed stiffness and a limp and the vet said it was arthritis, tried her on various anti-inflammatories and they all worked for a few days and then stopped. She got much worse this week and they took her in for x-rays yesterday because she's had autoimmune problems in the past and they thought it might be IMPA, but they found a soft tissue mass that's eating into the bone on one shoulder and a mass on the tip of her shoulder blade on the other side. Both are too high to be operable and we wouldn't put her through major surgery anyway. She's at home with Tramadol while they send the scans and biopsies to a specialist for a second opinion, but it's obvious what it is really. She's barely eating, sleeping most of the time and very very sore when she moves - we're having to carry her outside to go to the loo. If the tramadol doesn't get on top of the pain over the weekend we will be saying goodbye on Monday. She's the most amazing character and we all love her so, so much - don't know what we're going to do without her. Our other dog is going to be bereft, and our little boy has never known life without her.
These pics were only taken at the end of October....