Hemangiosarcoma is a deadly and common form of cancer in dogs. Since it rarely affects humans, progress in developing diagnostic tools and treatments for our canine companions has been painfully slow. For those of you who have been fortunate enough NOT to lose a beardie to hemangiosarcoma, it can be hard to imagine that your dog can seem entirely normal one day, only to collapse and die from a bleed the next.

I have lost three beautiful, talented, and loving beardies to this dreadful disease. My first experience with hemangio was with Jack. Jack was 8.5 when the undetected tumor on his spleen ruptured suddenly causing him to collapse. When I took him to Tufts University Animal Hospital, they found that not only did he have a tumor on his spleen, but it had also spread to multiple sites in his liver.

Please note that this was in November and Jack had had a full abdominal ultrasound analysis the previous March which showed NO sign whatever of tumors in these areas. I decided to go ahead with surgery anyway to save his life.

That gave me time to learn some facts about hemangiosarcoma. And the facts are terrible. Even with treatment, survival after diagnosis is a few months at most and the main drug used in treatment, doxorubicin, can itself damage the heart. Jack lasted about a month before he had a second bleed and I had to let him go. Flash was my second beardie to succumb to hemangiosarcoma.

In some ways, his case was a little less sad for me than Jack’s as Flash was 15 but seemingly in decent health for his age when he too collapsed at the dinner table where he was looking to share some human food. Ultrasound analysis showed he had a large mass on his heart which had ruptured. Fluid filled the sack around his heart making it difficult for him to breathe. This time I knew the odds we were facing, and that treatment was not in any way a viable option.

Dazzle, Jack’s amazing and wonderful daughter, was my third and I sincerely hope, final, experience with hemangiosarcoma. She was only 6.5 when I lost her also to the cardiac form of the disease.

It’s hard to describe the pain, and even guilt, you feel when losing a dog this way. You wonder why you didn’t recognize that something was wrong earlier when your sweet doggie child might have had a better chance to be treated. But that’s just how devastating this disease is.. it is generally symptomless until it is too late to do anything. And the only treatments currently available are incredibly old and mostly ineffective.

That’s why money for research is needed! Research: to uncover the genetic markers of this disease, to enable earlier diagnosis, and to produce more targeted, less toxic drugs for treatment. Please support the Trust’s effort in this area generously!

Joanne Williamson