Lumps, lumps, lumps

Today I want to talk about lumps on your dog. If you have an older dog, you might have noticed a lump or two popping up. There are lots of different kinds of lumps, but it's pretty important that you know what kind of lump your dog has.
I own an older Lab, and older Labs are prone to benign lumps called "fatty lipomas." Fatty lipomas are exactly that, a fatty tumor. They usually start small and can grow. They can become quite large. Vets often don't want to remove them, because they are always benign, and other than being unsightly, don't generally hurt the dog. A vet WILL remove a lipoma if it somehow inhibits the dog's ability to walk for example. My Lab Emma has several of these lumps - most about the size of a quarter. I keep a "lump list" for Emma. When I find a new lump, I add it to her list. Then the next time we go to the vet, I pull out the list, and the vet takes note of the new lump. We've had very few of Emma's lipomas removed.
There are obviously alot of other kinds of lumps, and some of those aren't benign. Something that feels like a lipoma might not be. So it's really important to get all lumps checked out. A vet can do something called a needle aspirate (or a fine needle aspirate), which means they use a syringe to pull cells out of the lump. They then spray those cells onto a slide and look at the cells. Alot of times, a vet can tell what type of tumor/lump the dog has by the type of cells on the slide. A needle aspirate isn't terribly expensive, and is certainly worth it to understand what your dog has.
Emma has had several lumps removed that were not lipomas, but were instead mast cell tumors. Mast cell tumors are a type of skin cancer, and are malignant. I found Emma's mast cell tumors myself, just by petting her. When the needle aspirates came back as mast cells, I immediately scheduled surgery to have the tumors removed. When a mast cell tumor (or any malignant tumor) is removed, the surgeon will try to get "clean margins." That means that the vet has to continue to cut out tissue until he/she feels that all of the cancerous cells have been removed. Two of the three mast cell tumors Emma has had removed were quite small - about the size of a b.b. They were also harder than a lipoma (they actually felt like a b.b.).
Unfortunately, a mast cell tumor can quickly spread, and once any internal organ is compromised, at that point, there isn't much that can be done. Dogs can have chemotherapy, but it often only gains the dog a few months at the most, and is often not particularly comfortable. We recently found out that one of our long-time clients had a mast cell tumor that has spread. :(
We often find lumps on dogs here at Dog Days, usually when we're petting them (or sometimes when they're being groomed). We will always ask you if you know of the lump, because we know that sometimes it's difficult to notice these things on your own dog. I also am pretty paranoid about lumps, because of Emma's history, and want to make sure that anything that might be cancerous is caught as early as possible. So forgive us if we've asked you multiple times about a particular lump - we sometimes forget if we've already brought it up (maybe we need "lump lists" for our clients' dogs!).
So be vigilant with your pet. I'm sure the vets at Aldie Vet Hospital at first thought I was a nut - the first mast cell tumor I found was so tiny, I had a hard time finding it to show them, and they had a hard time getting cells out of it. But they got enough cells to see it was a mast cell tumor, and when they removed it, found that it had fingers into parts of her muscle. So they had to remove a chunk of her chest muscle to get clean margins. The second one was just as difficult to find, but didn't have the fingers, so it was easier to remove. Now they never question my lump list, and dutifully check each and every one of them. So don't worry about being a worry wart - it's your dog, and your dog depends on you to ask the right questions, because they can't ask themselves. So be your dog's hero, and know your dog's body inside and out. If something isn't right, get your dog to the vet. Even if it's nothing, you'll feel better that you've had the dog checked out. And maybe you can avert a problem that you can't fix later on.