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Ida's Filas
This girl is Clementine (click to enlarge photo).
She is a red brindle
and a cancer survivor. Last November Clementine was diagnosed with bone
cancer. She had begun to limp on Monday of that week; I took her to my vet on Tuesday and, on Wednesday, I was on the phone to Angell (the MSPCA) Hospital. They gave me an appointment the next day and on Friday of the same week, the surgeon amputated Clemmie's left hind leg. They told me she was the largest amputee dog they had ever had---she is not fat or over sized, just a Fila--but she was in good health and very athletic so my vet felt she could make it on three legs.
After convalescing from the surgery, Clementine had four sessions of
chemotherapy at Angell. She was a little sick from these, mostly exhausted and she hated spending all day with strangers. But I endured and so did she.
Last week we went for our every-two-month chest x-ray and checkup with the oncologist. At ten months from diagnosis, her chest is still clear. (Osteosarcoma usually metastasizes to the lungs.) Bone cancer is generally incurable in dogs. If the amputation is early and the chemo successful, the mean survival from diagnosis is one year, although dogs have survived as long as two and a half years, which in a big dog's lifetime, is a long time.
I have sort of accepted---intellectually anyway---that eventually the cancer will appear in her lungs and it will be time to say goodbye. But in the meantime, we have had a very good year and I am thankful.
Anyway, she is my sweetie and sleeps on the bed. This picture was taken the night before she went in for surgery. I was trying to be calm for her sake but I was incredibly upset. Her mother, Maxie, had been my first Fila, and had died two years before. Maxie was my soulmate who still walks beside me on silent paws. I got Max in 1989 when I was divorced. I had a Toy Fox Terrier, Penny, all of eight pounds, and, after I was divorced, I got very paranoid about being home alone at night. I guess it happens to a lot of people under those circumstances. Anyway, after I got Max, all 145 pounds of her protective self--when she was an adult that is, I got her as a puppy--I kind of stopped being paranoid. Clemmie is almost the exact image of Maxie. Losing her will be like losing Max again.
Here are Clemmie's grandpuppies at four months.
Rusty, aka the Rusta-man, aka the Rustafarian (click to enlarge photo) is a very red boy who looks like his dad, Odin (aka Odio-Colognie), so much so that we called him Odin, Jr. at first. Of course, this became OJ and we knew we had to come up with a better name. Actually Odin is more of a red fawn while Rusty is a real red. By the way, the kiddie pool in the background belongs to Patsy Cline, my Patterdale Terrier.
Orson (click to enlarge photo), a red brindle like his grandmother and great grandmother, was named because his mother (Abigal Adams Estep aka Abba-dabba-doo, aka the Dabbers-girl) had three boy pups in a row. When Orson (aka Orsie-Horsie) was born, I said, "The third man!" which led to the thought of the movie and thence to Orson Wells.
I'll keep looking for more photos!
Ida - [ iwestep@charter.net ]
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