Hello,

I registered last night for a few reasons.  Our 7 year old German Shepherd Kara was diagnosed this week with bone cancer and I found your site while doing research as to what our options might be.  It's been a massive help and resource already and I wish I could thank each of you personally for sharing your stories and experiences.  I've looked at other sites as well, but many of them refer me back here as the best resource.

Kara began favoring her left front leg a few weeks ago.  She had occasionally done that in the past and she's very active.  So we assumed it was something that would eventually heal as it has in the past.  She showed no signs of any discomfort or pain at all.  Even when I would press on the shoulder or leg.  But, eventually when it didn't improve we took her for x-rays.  Wednesday of this week she saw an oncologist and they confirmed the diagnosis.  Although they are running a further test to rule out a rare sort of bacterial infection.  Her lungs seem to still be clear.  We've started her on pain medications, and except for not putting much weight on the left leg you'd not suspect anything was amiss.

Now that I'm more aware however, I do notice a few behaviors that are a little different.  She will still follow me to some of the rooms of the house, but she may lay down when she gets there.  She's not willing to jump up onto the bed to be petted, while she has always done that in the past given the slightest excuse.

As I'm typing this she's wandering around me, wagging her tail and occasionally barking at people or cars who pass by the front windows.  She's still bossing her brother Alex around once in a while too (he was here first, but she took right over as the boss by the time she was 6 months old.  He has a very sweet and laid back personality, while Kara is a bit more high-strung...they are both rescues from the German Shepherd Rescue of Orange County.)

We've discussed the diagnosis with a second doctor (my sons girlfriend works for a vet who looked at the X-rays for us) and we  are weighing the various options.  The finances (of course) are a concern that we have to account for, as well as her quality of life.  Before Kara joined our family we spent about 7k combined on Morgan who suffered from an emergency case of bloat and required emergency surgery, and Madison who we lost to pancreatic cancer; so we've been down this type of road before.  Morgan stayed with us for almost two more years after his surgery, Madison only stayed about six months after Morgan was gone.

Kara on the other hand has been my girl her whole life, while Alex would follow my wife everywhere, Kara would stay by me.  One of her favorite spots has been under my desk curled up against my feet.  So, the past few days I've hardly been able to work or accomplish much.  Each time I think I'm okay and have it all under control, I'll suddenly end up a wreck for an hour or so.  I lost my mom to cancer when I was 19 (she was diagnosed when I was 14), so I've seen the horrible progression firsthand and from all I have read about this, know that there's not some magic wand that can be waved to alter it's course.

But, today except for the small limp she's not in any apparent pain or discomfort, so I'm thankful for that right now.  I know that her life is lived much more in the moment than mine.  So she doesn't have to share the sadness that I'm feeling about the road ahead of us.

We're likely to have the amputation, but haven't scheduled it yet as we await those additional tests.  So, I guess I don't really have any specific questions to ask at this moment...I just needed to write this all out today.  

Thank you again for all of the information and advice you've shared here.  It's helped me to better understand what's ahead and given me examples to study as we begin to make the decisions that we have to make.  I'll try to update this thread when I have more information or when we've made the first round of choices of what to do next.

Jon

These are a couple older pictures of Kara (and Alex) that I put in Flickr years ago, in them she's about five months old:

(I'm not sure if they linked properly, so I've placed the links here as well)