Broc of Brooklyn

When Broc woke up yesterday morning he decided he was going to start walking, or hopping, and he did all day.  He had no problem going outside to use the curb and even jumped up on to the bed when it was time to go to sleep for the night.  He has also been eating and drinking normally and is enjoying his new home cooked diet, I just wish we would have started that a long time ago.  A great day for Broc!

To start off I would like to say thank you to everyone here for the wonderful welcome comments and all the good advice.  This is such a good community and we are so grateful for the information you have provided.  I hope we can make a good contribution and help others as well!

We picked up Broc late last night from the hospital and I was amazed at how well he was walking as the nurse brought him to us.  When I took over it was definitely more difficult than it looked.  We brought a towel to help support him and we made the short walk to the car with no problems.  We got home and when Broc got out of the car he did not want to walk at all, and it took a lot of coaxing and support to get him to our elevator and into the apartment.  He was still very drowsy, so we laid him on his side in our bed and he was out for the night.  This morning he woke me up with his paw and some whining, and I could definitely tell he was uncomfortable.  It turns out he just needed to switch what side he was laying on.  He never really got comfortable in the bed after that so I moved him to his bed on the living room floor and he seemed much happier there because he could prop himself up.

My main concern today was that he was refusing to eat or drink anything, and I know he had not had anything since the night before the surgery.  I would try to give him some of his favorites: deli turkey slices and bacon, and he just had no interest in them at all.  I ended up buying an oral syringe (as seen in the picture) and filling it with water and got him to drink that way.  He drank about 4 of those full of water (it only holds 2 tbsp) and that kind of paved the way to him regaining his appetite.  I’m not sure if it was because he was dehydrated, but after that he started eating with not problem.  He really liked sardines from a can, cottage cheese, cream cheese, and started eating his deli turkey after that.  At first he would only lick the water from the sardines, but I mixed it together with the cottage cheese and he ate it up.  To me it kind of sounds like a rough meal just after surgery, but these were some of the recommended foods I had come across and I just wanted to get something into his stomach.  Since then he has really perked up, and after he growled as he heard footsteps walking outside our door, I know he is on his way back to being himself.

My wife and I adopted Broc, a yellow pit bull mix, from the Broward County Humane Society in South Florida one Saturday in January of 2008. For some reason she woke up that morning and said we should get a dog. I have no idea why we stopped at a Petco but the shelter was there having a puppy adoption day and had a little coral set up filled with puppies. We actually had our eye on a little black German Shepherd mix but he had already been claimed (thank God!). Broc stood out because he was this cute little meatball of a puppy and the first thing we saw him do was stand on top of another puppy and pee all over him. Right away I knew he was going to be a unique character, and he always has been. He was an obnoxious little puppy but he grew out of it to become the most loving (and lazy) pal we could ask for. His favorite things in life are watching TV on the couch, eating, and sleeping in bed with us. He was a good sport when we moved from our quiet neighborhood in West Palm Beach to the madness of New York City in 2010 and has slowly but surely turned into a true city dog. The only thing he misses is doing his business in the grass because there isn’t much here, but when he finds that rare piece of it, he treats it accordingly by leaving his mark.

This week has been a whirlwind of bad news, emotions, and tough decisions. Tuesday Broc was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in his left front shoulder. He first began limping on this leg not long after the Fourth of July, and we thought that he had a minor leg injury. We had just recently moved into a new apartment with slippery hardwood floors and we thought Broc had just strained or sprained his leg in all of the excitement of moving. Initially I checked his leg by moving it in all of its possible motions and didn’t feel that there was any sign of a break and couldn’t pinpoint where the discomfort was coming from. It seemed to get worse over time so we took him into the vet and they basically said the same thing, its not broken most likely a sprain. They prescribed him Rimadyl for the pain, and the limp went away in a day or so.

As soon as Broc had taken all of his Rimadyl the limp came back. Two weeks after his first visit to the vet we took him to see another vet. This one did a little more thorough exam on his leg, but no x-ray. After moving his leg around and not finding anything she said the same thing, not broken, just a sprain, and prescribed more Rimadyl. At home Broc had the same results, the limp went away on the Rimadyl and came back once it was finished. Thinking that it was only a sprain I just let him take it easy on it for a few more weeks until last Sunday night I noticed a large red and enflamed area of bruising in the armpit area of the injured leg. I took him in to the vet right away the next morning and they x-rayed the leg and drew blood. The vet told me she would have to send the x-rays out to a radioligist and would call me if they had any news.

The next day, Tuesday, I got a call from my wife at work and she was crying uncontrollably. She told me that Broc most likely had a bone tumor in his leg and that it had the traits of osteosarcoma. The next steps I’m sure will sound all to familiar:  making an appointment with an oncologist, hearing the options, and deciding whether we will make the decision to let Broc try to live a very short time and keep his leg, or amputate it and do chemotherapy and try to beat the disease. We both didn’t hesitate to immediately say we are going to do whatever it takes to beat it, and we scheduled his amputation surgery for two days later. As the day drew closer we started to question if we were making the right decision, because he seemed perfectly fine. He was on Rimadyl so he wasn’t limping and there were no signs of any illness whatsoever. Another factor making us doubt our decision was that we had close friends lose a 5 year old dog to cancer a couple years earlier, and it seemed as though trying to fight it took the last months away that they had with their dog because the chemo was so hard on him.

We both agreed that going forward with the surgery would be the best thing, and a big piece of inspiration to us was finding the Tripawds website. The morning of the surgery (yesterday) I woke up and read the first blog I saw on the list, which was Chocolate Kisses, and it gave us both so much hope that there is a chance for Broc.

The surgery went as well as it could have and we got to go and visit Broc at the hospital this morning. He was lethargic from the medications but definitely happy to see us. We were told he is ready to come home tonight, and in just a couple of hours we are going to pick him up.  We are so excited to get him back home!