One Happy Dog Speaks

Well, seems like Happy Dog is hitting old age with a bang. We had the following ‘mass’ removed from his leg and biopsied…

What does this mean? Well if you know medical terms, this will help you:

From the biopsy:

Biopsy: There is a densely cellular, unencapsulated mass of neoplastic mast cells, admixed with mature eosinophils. Thumor cells are round with moderate amounts of finely granular amphophilic cytoplasm and round, cnetral nuclei with finely stippled chromatin and inconspicuous nucleoli. There is moderate anisocytosis and anisokaryosis. No mitoses are observed in 10 hpf.

Microscopic Findings: Mast cell tumor, grade II

Comment: Grade II mast cell tumors are moderately differentiated, and are associated with a low to moderate metastatic potential and a 3 year survival rate of approximately 55%. Recurrence following excision is fairly common in grade II and III tumors.

From the web:
Currently in dogs, mast cell tumors are histologically categorized into grades I, II, and III (Table 1). With surgical resection only, the percentages of dogs surviving 1,500 days after diagnosis have been reported to be 83%, 44%, and 6% for grades I, II, and III tumors, respectively.2 Grade I mast cell tumors tend to be locally confined to the skin and nonmetastatic. Grade II mast cell tumors are generally local, but some can be aggressive with regional node and distant organ metastasis. Grade III mast cell tumors tend to be biologically aggressive, possessing a high propensity for regional and distant metastasis. Although histologic grade remains the gold standard for predicting the biologic behavior of cutaneous mast cell tumors, other prognostic factors include tumor location, proliferative indices, breed, recurrence, c-kit mutations, c-kit staining pattern, and microvessel density.

What does it mean to me? It means “sit and wait”. Considering the average age of a French Mastiff is 6 years and Happy just hit 10 years… I’m glad that it is going so well. And if you look at the link just above, you’ll see most male mastiff’s die from cancer. If you read the ‘general’ writeup in books, it says Mastiff’s live to be 10 to 12 years. Since the link above is to the Dogue de Bordeaux Society and that is a survey of owners… I’m betting they are more accurate. I feel very lucky we have had Happy this long. He is old. Now we just wait. And it has added to an already very stressful two weeks. More on that some other time. Just wish me luck on making a Ben 10 Omnitrix watch for a birthday cake tomorrow. Sigh.