Tripawd Bruce

Hi everyone. Meet our sweet friend, Bruce.

Bruce is a 70 lb Pitbull mix (with Boxer? Mastiff? We’re not really sure with what).

This is Bruce with his little sister, Marley (they’re about 3 years apart). She’s USUALLY lying on top of him.

Case in point ^.  Anyway, at near the beginning of April, 2016, our little buddy began to lose hair in front of both ears and around both eyes. The left side looked a bit worse than the right. We brought him to the vet, as it was time for our 6 month comprehensive visit anyway. We have a Banfield wellness plan for Bruce and Marley (something I highly recommend if you don’t already have one. It has saved us a lot of money, especially over the last two months). At Bruce’s vet visit they did routine blood work, which all came back normal. They scraped his skin for mites (just in case), and sent him home with 10 days of antibiotics, with instructions that a skin biopsy may be needed if the condition didn’t improve.

Well, the skin condition did slowly improve (although he still has some slight thinness of the hair on the left side of his face near his eye, and around his elbows), but during the antibiotics we noticed Bruce began to limp. It was very inconsistent and mild at first. Sometimes you couldn’t tell if he was limping, or you could but it was only a little bit. He was still running and playing and his usual self. The limp didn’t go away though, and eventually became more severe. We brought Bruce back to vet on April 26, and his doctor was worried Bruce had elbow dysplasia. Bruce was put to sleep so the doctor could get some good Xrays of his arm. To our surpise, Bruce’s elbow looked great, and the cause of his limp was a large mass (taking approximately 30% of the bone) on his right humerus. A radiologist was consulted and thought the mass looked like a bone infection or bone cancer, so our vet referred us to a specialist at the Dallas Veterinary Surgical Center. We met our wonderful doctor there on 5/6, who was very concerned that the mass may be an osteosarcoma. After talking about our options and the costs, we decided to spare Bruce the pain of an open biopsy and move straight to amputation of his right front leg. We managed Bruce’s pain with Rimadyl while we waiting for surgery, and on Friday 5/13 Bruce officially became a tripawd.

We haven’t brought out buddy home yet, he’s still at the surgical center recovering. But they have called us every day with an update. He was finished with the surgery around noon on the 13th, and his surgeon said he did fine under anesthesia and their focus now was pain control, and that Bruce will be able to come home on Monday.

We received another call this morning, and the doctor told us that Bruce did well over his first night. He is on some pretty strong pain medication so he didn’t move around a whole lot last night. Today the plan is to slowly wean Bruce off the pain medication, transition him to oral medications, and encourage him to eat and move around some. We will get another update from them in the morning.

We are anxious, to say the least. We want our little buddy back home but we’re thankful for the care and attention he is receiving. We don’t know really know what to expect when he comes home.. and then there’s the matter of the leg biopsy. The amputated leg was sent for a biopsy in order to obtain a diagnosis of what the mass was.. and the chance that our buddy could have bone cancer. So.. right now we’re just waiting. Waiting to hear how our Bruce is recovering. Waiting until Bruce can come home. And waiting to hear the results of the biopsy.. in the meantime, we are trying to stay positive. We appreciate your support.

The McCaas