I know he is not a mastiff but.... I took my Boxer into the vet today. I have been noticing that he is not completely bearing weight on his back left leg. He also very slightly drags this leg when walking. Since he has hemangiosarcoma and is probably about 13 years old, this is not a huge surprise. I have monitored it for a little while and made the decision to take him into the vet. She ran xrays and it turns out he has some pretty severe arthritis in his back 2 legs. One leg is just worse than the other. This too is not completely surprising. I was actually fearing that it was a small tumor on his spine or something. She did say that on his spine his vertebra have started producing more bone which might could cause some pain and affect the nerves. I was aware that this could happen. Guess you learn something new every day. At any rate, she wants to give him 2 shots a week for the next 3 weeks to help with the pain etc. We will see how it goes. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers. Crosby is my white shadow and I have been preparing myself for the worst since we got the diagnosis of hemangiosarcoma about 4 years or so ago. I have been completely blessed to have him with me for so long, now. He still gets around pretty well and I hope this treatment will help him continue to beat the odds, but the worry is still there.
I also had the vet look at two spots under his jaw area. I found them the other day and they felt like 2 small (about the size and shape of those kids bouncy ball toys). Turns out he has this growth on one of his inner cheeks that I had not noticed. I occassionally look at his teeth (which aren't great but due to his age, etc. we have not wanted to put him under anesthesia for a scaling - boxers have notoriously bad teeth in old age), but I had not flipped his cheek up and noticed this growth. He was last in at the vet in april and she checked his teeth then and there was no growth. She gave me some antibiotic to use with him for a week and said if it did not significantly reduce in size, we would have to remove it. Please keep us in your thoughts and I will keep you posted.
I also had the vet look at two spots under his jaw area. I found them the other day and they felt like 2 small (about the size and shape of those kids bouncy ball toys). Turns out he has this growth on one of his inner cheeks that I had not noticed. I occassionally look at his teeth (which aren't great but due to his age, etc. we have not wanted to put him under anesthesia for a scaling - boxers have notoriously bad teeth in old age), but I had not flipped his cheek up and noticed this growth. He was last in at the vet in april and she checked his teeth then and there was no growth. She gave me some antibiotic to use with him for a week and said if it did not significantly reduce in size, we would have to remove it. Please keep us in your thoughts and I will keep you posted.
My good friends have an older Lab that sometimes gets randomly places fatty lumps. They look worse than they are and they don't appear to cause him pain. Maybe that's what the mouth lumps were (hope it's not an abcess!).
