Unhappy Hope

Today our dear little girl Hope took another step in her quest to regain her title of The Most Expensive Dog in the World. She went to the vet to have her teeth cleaned and have a humongous growth removed off her chest, and before she was done she'd had a second growth removed from her mouth and a couple of teeth extracted as well. Poor girl! Since about 4:00 when I brought her home she's been wandering around the house whimpering, staggering, dozing, getting up, drooling blood and then wandering around whimpering a little more. I feel so bad for her since she's clearly uncomfortable--who wouldn't be with all those stitches in her chest and in two places in her mouth too!

The crazy thing is, several years ago, Celtic had a fatty (non-cancerous) tumor removed from the exact same place on his sternum. If they weren't such hairy little children they'd have matching scars! Thankfully, just like Celtic's tumor of 2007, Hope's sternum growth was nothing more than a lipoma--it had just gotten so huge and unsightly we decided to have it taken off since she needed her teeth cleaned anyway. You can see it pretty well in our Christmas picture video, and it had definitely grown quite a bit in the four short months since then. I'm glad we got it taken off, but her resulting incision is obviously pretty big and icky!

The growth that our vet found in her mouth while cleaning her teeth was apparently way smaller, but unfortunately he wasn't sure exactly what it was, so he sent it off to the lab for analysis. We're hopeful that in a few days we'll find out that it's nothing to worry about, and hopefully by then she'll be a little more comfortable than she is now. Although we can't see the stitches, her mouth is pretty icky too. Thankfully there's been a reduction in bloody slobber since this picture was taken a few hours ago!

Hopefully Hope will have a good night's rest that will help speed her healing! She's definitely sleepy enough for it!