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Dogs can be afraid of other dogs’ illnesses
By Phyllis DeGioia
July 2, 2009
Last night my friend Shirley came over with her darling little Scooter, an 8-pound black fluff ball with malignant melanoma. That’s an aggressive cancer that was diagnosed a bit too late for Scooter to start the vaccine she could have had at the vet school. Scooter was diagnosed just a little over a month ago. At this point she has a large tumor that is visible on her lower lip. She is comfortable on pain meds, has an appetite, and enjoys running around and going for car rides. That could change any week or any day, or even any hour, but right now she’s comfortable.
Unfortunately, the poor girl smells bad, pungently so, even to someone with a poor sense of smell like me. Her breath is awful and she licks her paws a lot from allergies. She’s starting to pee in the house after having enjoyed a bionic bladder all her life. I sent some Pooch Pads home with them.
Shirley brought Scooter over last night so that I could help trim some of the Maltese/poodle mix’s hair around her mouth that’s been getting dirty. Cleaning it will help keep Scootie comfortable and avoid skin irritation. Shirley held her while I tried to cut and/or clip. Scootie is not at all happy about anyone getting near her mouth, for obvious reasons. We got some of the hair around her mouth trimmed – not as much as I’d like – and we stopped when she was clearly pretty stressed.
While we were doing that, I kept Dodger and Ginger outside to keep Scooter as calm as possible. When we were done, I let my dogs inside once Shirley thought it was okay. They ran into the living room and practically came to a screeching halt. Their reaction to Scooter was an amazing display of canine behavior. Ginger, who generally tells Scooter to leave her alone, backed off and nervously sat at my feet, staring at Shirley and Scooter with wide eyes. When they circled each other, Ginger was silent for the most part, and she wouldn’t get too close. When Scooter came to her, Ginger would back away.
Dodger, my sensitive English Setter who practically cries if you look at him cross-eyed, tried his best to hide from Scooter. He avoided her like the plague. Dodger skulked under the kitchen table and trembled. Then he skulked across the living room to sit next to me on the couch. At one point he gave wide birth to Scooter, ran to Shirley and said hi, and then came back to the couch in the same huge semi-circle. Scooter was feeling curious and hopped off of Shirley’s lap to go to the couch and say hi to Dodger. She reached up on her short toy legs and he pulled back as though he’d been slapped and curled into a ball in the corner of the couch, his face pointing away from Scooter. He was afraid of her – I felt his revulsion – and he couldn’t bear to interact with her. He couldn’t even look at her. My normally energetic dog was as still as could be, almost as if he were asleep even though he was awake.
Both of my dogs reacted completely differently to Scooter than they have before. They knew she was ill. We kept telling my dogs that it was okay that Scooter was sick, that it was part of the cycle of life, and that her pain is managed. Of course that did nothing but make me and Shirley feel better. Oddly enough, Shirley and I met when our mutual friend died of ovarian cancer at 48.
After they left, my dogs calmed down.
Here’s wishing Scooter good quality of life with whatever time she has left. She probably won’t make it to her 14th birthday this August, but as long as she’s happy and eating, she’ll be with us. When the time comes, I hope with all my heart that her passing will be peaceful. Given my dogs’ reaction, I suspect it will be sooner rather than later.
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My great dane was dx w/oral melanoma in April ‘07 (also on the lip) we tried the vaccine but it was unsuccessful. We treated him with Neoplasene and Chinese Herbs and I am happy to report yesterday we celebrated his 8th birthday. He’s doing great. I dont know if this would be a treatment option for Scooter, if I can help please email me
Comment by Lori — July 2, 2009 @ 5:51 am
A common early sign of serious illness in a dog is, sad to say, attacks from other dogs, especially packmates.
A friend is dealing with her older dog’s mystery illness.
When her young male - who the older dog had never much liked since puppyhood — started nailing him, we considered it to be a status issue between the two.
When her middle-aged bitch, who always goes along to get along, jumped him, it was the slap on the forehead — “Duh, this dog ain’t right.”
Both packmates would to go after the ill one when he’s “too close” to the owner.
It’s hard not to get upset when formerly harmonious dogs do something that seems so mean-spirited. But there are powerful self-protective instincts at work there.
A client’s young GSD bit her. She called me immediately in near-hysterics. I was gobsmacked — this was not something consistent with the dog’s temperament. I told her to crate the dog, cool down, have her husband handle the dog for the rest of the evening, and we’d figure out what was going on in the morning. Minutes after she hung up, she (the owner) had a grand mal seizure so severe that she cracked vertebrae. She’d never seized before in her life. Breeze was “alerting” to the impending seizure — after a fashion.
That your dogs manifested their fear as avoidance is fortunate for all concerned.
Comment by H. Houlahan — July 2, 2009 @ 6:23 am
Strangely, my now 4 yr old golden Lucy, is the reason I had found a very small “stick like” lump on her littermate, Harry when he was just 16 moths old. She was licking his neck like I had spilled something really good on it, so I felt that area and found “the stick” that eventually turned out to be a very aggressive atypical spindle cell sarcoma..I had wondered if that was just a strange coincidence and when one year later Harry was still with us..the lack of Lucy smelling and licking him gave me hope…but sadly his cancer came back with vengeance, as it often does after treatment..it is strange how cancer tries to outsmarten the treatments..
I still think that Lucy was aware of something not right…but of course I have no way of ever knowing for sure… and whether it was because she was his littermate, she never stopped wanting to be by his side during his last few weeks…she never showed any problem wanting to lie right next to him as they always did…it was Harry that would move away from Lucy which did help us to know the time was very near.
Comment by Carol V — July 2, 2009 @ 2:22 pm
About 3 years ago, we had a couple of instances where Opie (now 6) just nailed Spark (now 12) out of the blue. Both dogs have always engaged in very physical play, but Spark emerged “the winner” with her position in the pack assured. These attacks from Opie were something different. We just chalked it up to changing pack dynamics, maybe Opie was ready to move up now that Sparky was beginning to show her age a little. Maybe there was a subtle challenge that we missed.
As it turned out the challenges were yet to come for Sparky. Long story, but it turned out that Sparky had a chronic autoimmune disease (masticatory muscle myositis) and we now realize she was showing subtle symptoms at that time…symptoms so subtle that we didn’t chalk it up to anything but the normal aging process. It took another year before her symptoms were acute/classic enough to warrant the blood test, but we think that Opie sensed something was wrong long before the blatant physical symptoms appeared.
Thankfully, they are back to their playful, and endearing relationship. And Opie is so relieved to have The Queen back on the throne!
Comment by Melinda — July 2, 2009 @ 9:34 pm
Just catching up … Heather, that story about the biting GSD is incredible!
Comment by Gina Spadafori — July 3, 2009 @ 6:15 am