Tigger the Dalmation

Meet Tigger the dalmation. Tigger presented with a growth approximately 1.5cm in diameter on the underneath of her neck. Please see the picture at the top which is supposed to be a picture of it. Tigger is only 6 months old and didnt think much of holding still with her neck held up whilst we took a picture, so she wriggled. Hence the pic is slightly out of focus. She was better at having a picture taken of her face though, as you can see on the bottom picture, especially when we promised her a dog biscuit if she held still.

Back to the lump. We advised the owner that we should take a fine needle aspirate of the lump which means sticking a fine needle in to the lump, with local anaesthetic cream applied on the skin over the lump first. No actual general anaesthetic is required for this quick procedure. After taking the aspirate from the lump we prepare smears and examine them under the microscope. Pamela, one of the partners at Shamrock, is a trained cytopathologist having also had 14 years experience of working at a veterinary diagnostic laboratory. In this case the lump turned out to be a histiocytoma which we suspected from the clinical appearance. Histiocytomas are a type of a tumour and they most commonly occur in young to middle aged dogs. They are interesting in that the body's own immune system fights these tumours and most times they will spontaneously regress within 4-6 weeks.

The beauty of doing a fine needle aspirate is that in cases such as these, the dog may not need to have an operation. The more old fashioned approach used to be to remove lumps and then get them analysed. Much better to do a preoperative assessment, and in some cases such as this one, the dog may not even require surgery.