Around March 10, we noticed that Ripley was limping and, when it didn't get better after a few days, we took her to our vet, Dr. Weishun. After x-rays, she identified the cause as possibly being cancer and referred us to the clinic at Texas A&M University (TAMU) for more x-rays and a biopsy. Dr. Melmed, at TAMU, diagnosed Ripley with osteosarcoma (bone cancer) in her front left leg (in the shoulder area) on Monday, March 25. We learned that bone cancer is not uncommon in larger dogs, particularly in racing dogs, possibly because of the stress from their running. The treatment options for the disease are pain management with drugs, pain management by amputation, and/or chemotherapy. Unfortunately, even with the best treatment, there is basically no chance of a cure, so, after some soul searching and research we decided to go the route of pain management with drugs.

The vet applied a Fentanyl "pain patch" to the back of Ripley's neck that afternoon. The drug that the time-release patch provides is much stronger than morphine and is a controlled substance, so every few days we take her back to Dr. W for a patch replacement. Currently, the patch is doing wonders for Ripley. She is able to put almost 100% weight on the leg again and is back to acting like her old self, no longer limping and yelping in pain. The life expectancy after diagnosis is generally only 1 - 2 months, but we hope to make her remaining time with us as happy as possible - she's been getting a lot of people food and special attention.

Updates:

4/9/02: Ripley's last 3-day pain patch was applied 10 days ago. We removed it (since it was spent) several days ago and she is still in great shape. She is barely favoring the leg - you wouldn't notice if you weren't looking for it - and isn't exhibiting any other signs of pain. In fact, she seems just as normal as she was several months ago, so we're enjoying seeing her back to her old self while being watchful for any decline. She is now at 1 month since diagnosis.

4/15/02: At 3:30 am on 4/10, Ripley woke me up to tell me that her leg hurt again. When we got up later that morning she was no longer putting any weight on her affected leg. We took her to see Dr. W that morning, who gave her a new pain patch. Since then, she has continued to heavily favor the leg (putting 0% to 20% weight on it). The good news, though, is that she is not yelping in pain much at all and her personality remains largely unchanged - happy and alert. She even continues to go racing out into the backyard with Zoe every night in the hopes that they'll surprise a rabbit to chase. Our next step is to just keep an eye on her and make decisions as we go.

4/17/02: Ripley has been in a lot of pain the last few days and has been unable to enjoy life because of it. We took her to the vet this morning and, at 9:45 am, she laid on a blanket in the sun as we held her and told her how much we loved her, and passed away from us quietly and gently.