My Beast Blessed

For the Thanksgiving holiday, I took my dogs to the groomer.  Of the bunch, the only one who gets any sort of clipping is my old man, Dante, a Standard Schanuzer.  When he needs a haircut, he is generally a big, gray shaggy throw rug.  He emerges sleek and clean.

Except, this haircut revealed a tumor down in his genital area.

I have to admit, I have spent the last couple of days in an anxious state.  As some readers of this blog may know, Dante is my special dog.  He was abused as a puppy by his first owner's father and was subsequently adopted by the pastor of my former parish in Santa Ana, who had Dante several years before I became his third owner.  Abuse of animals and children evoke a visceral and unpleasant feeling in me, so I tend to favor Dante a bit over the rest of the pack.

Now, I will not give an illness or death of a pet the same importance of that of a human.  We no longer live an agrarian lifestyle, however, so pets do provide more companionship than they do function.  Thus, when a pet is ill or dies, it is a great sadness.  Unfortunately, Dante's tumor came at a time close to the loss of a friend, the third anniversary of my mother's death from cancer, and now I have to worry about a possible tumor in a close and dear friend (an MRI is scheduled today for my friend and he is on my mind).  All of this combines to make for anxiety.

I took Dante to the vet this morning.  The doctor looked him over and I held him as the vet extracted cells from the tumor.  Dante was a trooper and did not even flinch, although he was nervous at being in a vet's examination room.  The vet looked at the cells under the microscope . . . and pronounced them nothing more than a bunch of benign fat cells. 

Thank you, Lord.

The vet advised me to do nothing rather than introduce a risk of placing Dante, who is 8 years old, under anesthesia.  Only if the tumor - oh, let's call it by its less scary name as the vet did, Dante's fatty lipoma - grows to where the dog's movements are impeded is it worth having it removed.  Coincidentally, Dante's previous owner, Fr. Moneypenny, also has fatty lipomas (limpomae?) on his right arm that he has been advised by his doctor to ignore rather than make a fuss  or spend the money to have them removed.  Odd, that.

And so I breathe a sigh of relief for now.  In the meantime, I grieve my other losses and keep the faith that my friend's MRI will show all clear. 

St. Peregrine, patron of tumors, benign and malignant, pray for him.