Hi Janet,

I wanted to chime in on the chemo/hair loss thing. As I said earlier Maggie was on a different protocol, she started two weeks after her amp and was in treatment for 6 months.  She did not lose big patches of fur, but it took a long time for the fur to regrow around the amp site, and it seemed like it took a long time for the shaved fur on her front legs to fill in each time (IV chemo every other treatment).  The fur on her chest did thin a bit also, but she never had any bald spots.

What was startling was how fast she greyed during treatment, she was a black pug so it was very evident.  I guess with Patou it won't be too noticeable!  Mag was 7.5 when she started treatment, and had a bit of grey, but I swear she was noticeably more grey every day! I still have Mag's little sis Tani (same parents, different litter) who is now 10.5 and is not as grey now as Mag was when she finished treatment at 8 years old.

You can go to Mag's blog if you want to see pics of her, the link is in the signature block below.

Karen

Carbo is not supposed to mess with hair growth much. Tazzie was on Doxyrubin, which is known to have some effects on hair growth. "They" say it mostly affects dogs with evergrowing coats (e.g. poodles and terriers (pretty darn sure that nothing like that was in Tazzie, but I suppose you never know for sure), but it seemed to affect the places on Tazzie that had actively growing fur – the places where hair was growing back after the surgery become denuded. I suppose that would be pretty much the same as a dog with hair follicles that are always active (evergrowing fur). I don't know why it affected the tail! I suppose it could interfere with regrowth after they shed, and Tazzie always did his best to shed. Power mushrooms seemed to help the hair come back and, more importantly, gave Tazzie heaps of energy. But we did not begin those until pretty late in the game, when he was suffering from a secondary growth on his leg.

Anyway, enough with the hairy talk!