03/07/2025
Cotswold Vets team saved Rita's life today.
This would have been our last walk together yesterday had they not acted quickly.
She's far from out of the woods and is at Eastcott vets tonight to monitor her.
She's not been right for a while, with being panty and pacing, struggling to settle at times, being clingy and acting strange , such as staring at Ben my husband until he follows her into the room where I'm sleeping etc ( I was starting to worry there was something very wrong with me). But I wasn't happy to just put the panting and pacing down to warmer weather and older age.
We have been back and forward to the vets and they have done everything to try to get to the bottom of it, as well as the fantastic Claire Warman - Veterinary Physiotherapist & McTimoney Animal Chiropractic, with both identifying spinal pain. Bloods until today had come back as good. This in itself was handled amazingly by Cotswold Vets as she wasn't previously coping with having bloods taken and they stopped the procedure, reassessed and we got a new game plan for the bloods to go smoothly, which it did, they listened to Rita and put her welfare first to ensure this wasn't a trauma for her.
Otherwise Rita has still been enjoying walks as usual, getting in and out the river, running and rolling like she loves to do in the grass and eating normally.
Last night she was really quiet after her walk and went off her food, I gave her pain medication, she then ate and we had her in the room with us overnight. This morning she was very lethargic and didn't want to eat so they got her straight in for me and did bloods. The bloods showed anemia that may have started around 3 days ago. They then did an ultrasound and found a large mass on her spleen and internal bleeding.
It was likely the mass had ruptured on her walk yesterday evening. We were very lucky she didn't pass away overnight.
We were left with a difficult choice as to whether to do surgery, the only way to save her life as otherwise she was unlikely to have lasted the day, or let her go due to the likely possibility the mass was cancerous and would have already spread. We opted for surgery which was apparently touch and go and she had a huge amount of blood in her abdomen. They have removed the spleen and mass and this will be sent off for biopsy which may take 10 plus days to come back.
So we are hoping she does OK overnight, we aren't sure of how long we will have with her if the mass results come back as malignant.
At 10 years old I hope we have more time.
