Buster

Susie Crockett writes:

Buster was a character, a trouble-finder and a dog with a huge heart.  He was our son’s dog, and got into as much trouble as any puppy could, from getting stuck under furniture, eating cash that had to be surgically removed, downing anti-inflammatory pills and needing his stomach pumped, ripping up carpeting, eating furniture, door frames, dog tags and rocks to spending the night in ICU after sitting on a nest of hornets.  It was for dogs like Buster that veterinary insurance was designed.  We, unfortunately, didn’t have it for him, but we loved him and took care of all the injuries his curiosity helped him incur.

He began limping on March 12, 2006.  I thought he had probably jumped out of my husband’s truck and sprained his leg.  I took him to Dr. Branch in Tifton (who knew Buster very well by then) and he thought it was probably a sprain too and gave me some medicine.  By Thursday, Buster couldn’t bear any weight on his leg.  Back to Dr. Branch who did some x-rays and told me to come back that afternoon for a consultation.  He took me to the back of his office, which sort of scared me because we had never been past the exam rooms before.  He pulled up the x-ray and said he thought Buster had cancer.  I thought it wasn’t possible, that he had just done something crazy again.   But you could see a spot on the bone of his right front leg and Dr. Branch was pretty sure what it was.  He said we needed to go to the University of Georgia Veterinary Teaching Hospital to have them take a look.  I asked for an appointment the following week and he told me that we needed to be up there the next day.  I could see urgency in his face.

So, off we went to Athens, still not expecting that it could be cancer.  After new x-rays, they thought it was.  On review of the biopsy results, one pathologist said it was, one wasn’t sure, and one didn’t think it was cancer.  We went home to Tifton to think about what to do.  The doctors recommended amputation of the front leg and then chemotherapy.  That would give Buster maybe a year, with luck.  If we did nothing, he had maybe 4 months.
A few days later, Buster had his amputation.  Three weeks later we began his rounds of chemotherapy, 3 doses of two different drugs, 3 weeks apart.  We met some of the greatest veterinarians at the University of Georgia that you could ever meet.  Dr. Burns did the surgery and Brennen McGoldrick was Buster’s student teacher at the time.  I truly respect and admire the work they did with Buster on his surgery and rehabilitation.

We were then transferred to Dr. Melissa Parsons, Dr. Mike Childress and Dr. Nichole Northrup to begin the cancer treatments.  We met numerous students who were wonderful with Buster and I am sure have by now gone on to become fine doctors. In the middle of the chemotherapy treatments, we discovered 2 mast cell tumors that interrupted his chemo so they could be removed.  Through it all, Buster was a champ and the staff at UGA were our cheering squad and our life line.

My husband was offered a job in Oklahoma at about the time I was scheduled to have a knee replacement and Buster was scheduled for surgery to remove a small lympoma that appeared on his remaining front leg, which was worth a million dollars to us all by that point.

My surgery was scheduled a week after his, and when we were both home from the hospital, we recuperated together with help from my Mom, who came to stay with us.
After moving to Oklahoma, we found new vets to care for Buster.  When he began limping on a hind leg, the new vets thought his cancer had probably returned.  We knew it would, but because Buster had beaten the odds, we just thought maybe he had gotten past it or maybe it hadn’t been cancer after all.  We had the same shock as the first time he was diagnosed.  It couldn’t be, but it was.

I called Dr. Northrup at UGA, and even though it had been over a year since she had seen him, she remembered him fondly.  She thought we might have one option with a drug called summarium.  Buster had a weeklong treatment with this new drug, hoping it would stop the growth of the tumor on his hip.  It didn’t.  Osteosarcoma is a beast.  It hits with a vengeance and just won’t let go.  Buster began chemotherapy again and was put on medication for pain.

When the time came to make the hard decision, we made it, knowing that what he had given us was much more than we had given him.  For ten and a half years, he was our constant companion, our buddy and best friend.  For the last 33 months and 14 days, he was our champion prize-fighter, living much better and much longer than most dogs with this type of bone cancer.   And we credit the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine for his extra time with us.