Buddy the Rescued Rottweiler

Early this morning Mary and Buddy left for the 3+ hour trip to Colorado State University in Ft. Collins. Buddy is on his way there to participate in a study that combines a high-dose radiation treatment with some new drugs that will slow/stop the growth of his cancer. (In case you missed it, it has been determined that Buddy does have Osteosarcoma in his rear leg)

Although we worried a bit about how Buddy was going to do when left overnight, the doctors at CSU convinced us that this would be best for him, instead of getting the first treatment and just having to return the next day for the second.

The way this treatment works is that Buddy gets 2 doses of very focused radiation on the cancer area 1 day apart. Then he goes about his normal life for 30 days and the process is then repeated. The idea is that the cancer is stopped from spreading, the pain is reduced or mostly eliminated,  and Buddy is able to keep his leg.

This type of treatment was important to us because Buddy suffers from Hip Dysplasia and we did not feel that he would do all that great as a Tripawd, and since the life expectancy is roughly the same (In other words there’s no way to know how long Buddy will live no matter what treatment protocol is used) we figured that limb-sparing techniques were the way to go.

Leading up to this study, Buddy was placed on Duramax (For whatever reason, the study does not work well with Rimadyl, even though these are basically the same family of medicines) and he has responded very well to that, even getting back to jumping and playing, so we’re thinking that he will do even better once the pain from the cancer is reduced!

Buddy has always been Mary’s dog. He picked her when we first saw him (you can read about this in the About page) and he’s always been by her side when we’re home. However lately Buddy has been really letting me know that he’s an equal opportunity dog. He’s been so happy and playful lately that I wasn’t entirely surprised when he decided to join me on the recliner last night:

We will pick him up from CSU tomorrow, and then Mary and I will be out of the country for a week. By the time we get back we expect that he’ll be very much out of pain and ready to really enjoy life! (Which is good, because he’ll get a chance to meet some Tripawd friends during the Tripawd Pawty in Colorado Springs on the 15th!)

This entry was posted on April 29, 2010 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Colorado State University, Pre-Surgery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.