Lump on a choco lab

[lil96]

I know someone who is in a bit of a bind financially right now. (7 kids, no health insurance, job making barely enough to live) but they have aan choco lab, ~8yrs old. She(the owner) recently (the person not sure how long) noticed a lump on her(the dog) side. She says she is terrified it is cancer or something really bad, so she doesn't want to have to put her dog to sleep and is really scared and on top of that she doesn't have much extra$$ around, she worries to save her life it will be crazy expensive.
I told her to go to the vet and have it checked out, that the longer she waits, the worse it will be. She started crying about how it was going to be too hard for her, she loves her dog....
Does anyone have any advice on how to get her to take the dog in to get it looked at? I was almost to the pont of saying, you are killing your dog by not taking her, but she kept crying and I felt so bad for her.
Also, the lump is hard, but squishy feeling. (i touched it for a second, but it was gross) maybe the size of a small soda lid.

[DeLaUK]

Whereabouts on the dogs side?? It could just be a fatty cyst, to get it checked out shouldnt cost more than the vets office exam and maybe an aspirate (where they insert a hypodermic needles into the lump and then see what comes out....they can look on a slide to see if its just fat cells, or if its blood or discoloured fluid or if anything at all comes out)....then depending on what that shows take it from there, its hard to say sometimes even with a hands on exam but a lot could depend on the shape, how fast its grown and the colour of the lump itself and if its changing.

Obviously I dont know what it is, just saying that she should at least try and get the initial check up with a vet before she starts thinking that the dog has to be put to sleep.

[lil96]

maybe if I tell her it could be that, it would calm her a little bit.
The lump is near her rib cage, closer to the bottom of the rib cage.
I just feel so bad for the dog and her!

[DeLaUK]

If its between the skin and rib cage then there is a good chance its just a fatty cyst.....at least that is the more common type, there are other types and Im basing this on my experience of the years of working as a vet tech and with a couple of my own dogs, my whippet had lumps all over the place, different sizes, some of them would suddenly grow.....she was tested on a couple of the 'worse looking ones' and every one of them every time they were tested....over a period of 10 years....were just fatty cysts, they never turned into anything more than that.
I remember one dog that had a fatty cyst that we had to remove, by the time it came in the cyst was huge, it weighed something like 15#....Id never seen one that big....the owner had also suspected the worst and put off having the vet take a look....dog recovered well after surgery but it cost the owner something like $500, had she had the vet take care of it as soon as it got about the size of a tennis ball it wouldnt have cost nearly as much.....this was an extreme case though....they usually dont require surgery as long as they dont interfere with the dog getting around....like in my whippets case.

Generally with other types, sometimes they will open up and start to bleed, have a foul odour to them......

Like I said, its definately worth having a vet take a look and maybe do a quick aspirate.

Please keep in mind Im not a vet and there is no way that Im saying this is just a fatty cyst....just that its always best to at least get it checked out before making any major decisions. If after the vet takes a look and its not good news then at least your friend will know that under the circumstances she can at least make her decision based on having better knowledge.

Good luck to your friend and her dog.

[hermann muenster]

It's pretty common for labs and goldens to develop huge fatty cysts around this age. I have seen dogs with grapefruit sized cysts that were not cancerous.

Our golden had huge ones on his ribs for years! My vet offered to do a biopsy but felt so sure that they were just fatty cysts that he told me that it was more of a risk to sedate the dog for a biopsy than to just leave them alone. I left them alone --- they got huge but were no threat to his health.

By the way --- these fatty cysts felt very different from the cancerous tumors that he developed years later.

[lil96]

A grapefruit!!! that is huge!
thanks for the info!

[honeybears]

Lil, its probably just a fatty tumor, Jakes has one there, actually he has them all over now and he is 9. His new nickame is Lumpy. A few are the size of baseballs, they do no harm unless they startto interefere with things like walking.

I used get Jakes aspirated, but now I cant keep up he has so many. Its like $50 they can tell right there by looking at the color of the fluid if its suspicious. If she is worried about the cost, have her call around to see what it costs to do an aspiration. And my vet said a fatty tumor rarely goes to cancer so that gives me piece of mind.

[lil96]

I haven't been able to get in touch with her, but I lefft a message saying it could be that.
I hope it is a fatty cyst. (I keep getting visuals of what it looks like pulling the gunk out of it)

[honeybears]

(I keep getting visuals of what it looks like pulling the gunk out of it)

its nothing really, its just a fine needle, they draw a m very minute amount and look at it, I was in the room the last time they did it, so easy