Caring for a Three Legged Dog or Cat

The old adage, “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” has never ringed so true as it did 2 years ago. My wife and I were both on a high note personally and professionally. We were fortunate enough to buy a house in Southern California, we were expecting our first child (a boy although we didn’t know the sex yet), and both of us were working in entertainment on hit television shows. We were on cloud nine and only looking forward to adding a baby into our already fun, crazy family wolf pack.

Our family already consisted of the two of us, and two 100lb Great Dane mixes, Herman and Clyde. Between preparing for the baby, painting the nursery, and working full time jobs, we spent idle time daydreaming about our son growing up with his two best friends. We talked about walking our son around the block to school with his buddies, we dreamt of future camping trips, snowshoeing, and fishing trips with the dogs at his side. We are active people and we take our dogs wherever we go.

It was after a zombie run (another story) where we noticed Clyde was limping on his front right leg. His carpus was swollen and warm to the touch… I thought it was maybe a tendon or chipped bone at first, but then realized it was much more than that, so I made an appointment to see the vet two days later.

I had to work that day so my wife called to let me know she was taking him in and asked if he needed anything else while there… I said no, he’d be fine. What I didn’t expect was the call from the vet saying he had some really bad news and he wanted to talk to me first before telling my wife who was sitting in the waiting room. My vet Dr.D informed me this could be a very aggressive form of cancer, most likely Osteosarcoma but in order to find out we needed to see a specialist. Of course Denial is the first reaction to the idea that a 5 year old, still a puppy in our eyes, would have cancer. The severity of it was not lost on me as our vet started to breakdown on the phone because he lost one of his dogs to the exact same thing 4 months prior.

I then realized why he called me first. We needed to come up with a game plan on how he was going to tell my 8-month pregnant wife that our dog could have cancer. Long story short, I called her first to say the news would not be great but we would get through this and talk to specialist about what the next step would be. The one thing he said to me before we hung up- “there is always hope”. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, as I was numb from the possibilities. So we brought Clyde home, and I realized we needed to come up with our plan of attack immediately.   I spent the next four days reading every single thing I could about Osteosarcoma, treatment, and longevity of fighting this disease while we waited to see the specialist.

My wife and I were so heartbroken over the possible and eventual diagnosis that our daydreams took a dark turn. Our boy may never know Clyde, Will Herman be lost without his “brother”. Would our hiking and fishing trips with Clyde ever even happen with our little boy…the seed of doubt was planted and nurtured when we got the diagnosis.

After spending two days in a funk, I realized this is one of the moments where you attack a problem head on, and grow from the experience. After the specialist we decided we would amputate the leg at the shoulder, with the idea that hopefully the tumor had not spread, and with hopes he had not developed lung mets. We moved forward with the surgery, questioning taking off the leg, but we knew it would be the best case for Clyde. We talked Chemo, radiation and pain management … ultimately deciding we should try to treat Clyde Holistically. We went against a lot of advice we were given and decided that after the surgery we would enjoy Clyde for as long as we were given.   I researched and researched supplements, and vitamins, diets, etc.… and attacked his cancer by boosting his immune system. We were told 90% of dogs don’t make it a year and if we got a year with him then we would be lucky … so we took our shot.

I am happy to say with the right diet, a positive outlook, and three loving humans; Clyde has not only survived but also thrived. He is one of my son’s best friends, they play together, lay around the house together, and rough house in the backyard together. In October we will celebrate 2 years of Clyde being Cancer free (or at least undetected).  Sorry for the delay in writing, but we have in the words of Matthew McConaughey we just “ Keep on livin man”.  

We have been very fortunate but also grateful for our dogs. In July we had our second child- a daughter- and all of our dreams just got that much bigger. Clyde was at the door to greet our daughter the day we brought her home. Our wolf pack had grown but with life there is also death, we also lost our older Dane/Mix Herman 3 months later in December.  At 11 1/2 his body began to give out and we realized he had a very aggressive form of throat cancer, beyond saving... we made the difficult choice to put him down.  We continue to take every day as it comes, and a week before we knew about Herman's diagnosis we adopted a 5 year old St. Bernard who for some reason spoke to us when we had no intention of getting another dog.  Frankie can never replace Herman, but he arrived at a time when Clyde would most need a companion.

Our Daydreams are back to being limitless, and the diagnosis of Clyde's cancer seems like a distant memory. That sour Lemon had been turned into sweet sweet lemonade and our entire family will drink to that. We raise our glasses in honor of the life herman lived and the one clyde continues to live.  We've had to make the tough decision to battle Cancer twice with our dogs and once there was nothing we could do, and the other time we fought back and are winning the battle.  So for those of you looking for some reassurance, all we can say from our experience is to have hope and listen to your heart and your dog..., because as our Vet said in the beginning , “There is always hope”.