Hey y’all!

My sweet girl Cupcake found me at the shelter when I was in college and pregnant back in 2018. I chose her because she was so sweet and gentle with me being pregnant and with my child’s brother who was around 4/5 at the time. She was in VERY bad shape; you could see her ribs, her fur was a dull dark brown with spots all over her skin, she had scars on her head, and her top front teeth were ripped out with very rough paws. I believe she may have been a bait dog or a dog who unfortunately had a run in with horrible people, but she found her way into my heart as well as my family. She has been my son’s bestfriend for the last 5 1/2 years since he was born and I wouldn’t trade her for the world. 

Now that the backstory is out of the way, back in February I took her to the vet because she had been on and off limping on her right hind leg for the past 2 ish months and I wrote it off as her tripping in a hole she or one of our other dogs dug in the yard. We did xrays and found a mass growing INSIDE of her bone but the vet as well as oncology looked at it and said it didn’t show any aggressive characteristics and that they don’t think it’s cancer at all. They thought it was possibly a cyst or some fungal/bacterial infection going on and offered that I could do a biopsy to rule it out. Time comes and goes and she improves for a few months with no more issues. Come late May shes limping again and then when I call to make an appointment for a biopsy in early June she’s refusing to walk on her leg at all. We go in for a recheck of her xrays before doing a biopsy and find that it has grown but is still completely smooth, all the bone density is still there and again there is the same report. No aggressive characteristics, don’t believe it to be cancer at all. My vet being amazingly honest told me he has never seen this type of scan before and hasn’t treated anything like it so he referred me out to the teaching hospital in town at our local university.
Mid July we go in and they are telling me they are 99% positive it’s cancer and it’s compromised her bone so much that they are suggesting amputation no matter what the results come back as. An FNA was performed and the needle “went through her bone like butter” and 5 days later her amputation was done. 
They sent off her limb for the full testing to be done and we are waiting for her results now. We are 5 days post-op not including surgery day and she is doing amazing. She moves around just fine, she isn’t too concerned with attempting to lick at her incision, she IS miserable with her cone but she goes for her check up Aug 12 so hopefully we can remove it soon. 

I unfortunately cannot afford chemo for my loving girl so I’m holding out hope that it’s anything other than osteosarcoma since the FNA came back as “consistent with sarcoma” with fibro and chondrosarcoma being given as other possibilities. They have a better life expectancy than osteosarcoma post-amputation so I’m holding out hope where I can.

Also, they believe that she is 4-5 years older than what we originally thought and that her health and appearance caused the shelter to age her down when she was taken there. We thought she was just turning 7 and they think shes at least 10 or 11 years old. 

Sorry for the long post but that’s our story, our life was changed in the matter of 6 months and really drastically changed in a matter of one month. 
Going to continue loving on our girl as long as we have her for.