You may know of Tess, our collie cross. You may have read about her destructive capabilities. Unfortunately, she may not be destroying things for much longer.
A few weeks ago, she started to bleed from the right side of her mouth. Noticing a swelling on the top of her jaw on the right side, we took her to the vets. Vet didn't like the look of it, asked us to bring her back later in the week for anaethetic and a possible biopsy. £309 total cost after they had to remove 6 teeth. Tess much happier, if a little bothered by inability to race through meals as quickly as she used to.
Unfortunately, we got the results of the biopsy back and it turns out she has cancer. On the upside, it is "locally invasive", which means it is unlikely to spread, on the downside, it means that Tess is now on pain relief until she stops eating.
The vet won't put her down because she's still happy to eat and in otherwise good health. I would have preferred him to say that she should be put down for 2 reasons:
1. Despite the vet saying that she has no idea what is happening, there will come a point, most likely before she stops eating where the pain relief will not even touch the pain.
2. Our last dog, Tina was put down when she stopped eating. Tina was skin and bones thanks to a suspected tumour that had been depriving her of any benefit from the food she was eating. I'm not sure that anyone in our house could go through that again - to watch Tess, who used to be on the slightly tubby side waste away to nothing. I suspect that she's already underweight, judging by the fact that you can feel every rib and bone in her spine not to mention the edge of the back of her skull, where she enjoys being rubbed.
When Tess has to be put down, will we get another dog? Most likely, despite everything, our house has had a dog from day one, we wouldn't be able to imagine any length of time without a dog.