I as spending money on horse supplies because I had this beautiful animal keeping me busy:

She was just a baby and I was teaching her how to be ridden by humans. Two babies… One a child from my loins and another given to me by a friend… Another one that wasn’t quite a child anymore but I couldn’t resist… this picture of Happy Dog…

Happy couldn’t resist laying on pillows that got left on the floor. Or toys or anything that was soft… sorta like THIS DOG.

Wonderful, happy memories. I lost weight during the time I was horsebackriding, I felt great, the family was happy most of the time. Yep, I have great memories of those times.

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.

Look at that grey. Still a cutie.

After we got home we took off the collar. Folks, there is NO WAY that Happy can lick that sore. It is under right front leg… back just a little. And that collar was HUGE… I think my house is a wreck now… with that collar on, it would have been worse.

And he looks soooo pitiful because we won’t feed him or give him water. The doctor warned us that he might throw up if he had anything. We did end up giving him some water and food later… just a small amount of water, wait 30 minutes, a little more water, wait 30 minutes, 10 pieces of food… you get the idea… but this was just too cute a face when he was laying by his dishes and not allowed to have anything.

Since I will be a little busy today… Here is something for you to come up with a caption for me. I’ll post the best ones on Saturday…

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“I can’t believe Tater started Kindergarten today.”

“Darth Tater has gone to kindergarten – so now who will tell me – *crrshk* “you are my doggggggy” *crrshk* ???

At least as of 6 o’clock this morning she couldn’t log on to munu; but maybe now she can.

Personally, I think the fact that she doesn’t know where she sent her new password should qualify for the Humor of the Day, don’t you?

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And here are some pictures I just couldn’t resist!

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Fire hydrants. Yep, what a great new item for HappyDog to pee on… just like in the cartoons.

Yaa. I’m still tired… more stories later.

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