Help! Found A Lump On The Dog… Now What?
Dr. Demian Dressler is internationally recognized as “the dog cancer vet” because of his innovations in the field of dog cancer management, and the popularity of his blog here at Dog Cancer Blog. The owner of South Shore Veterinary Care, a full-service veterinary hospital in Maui, Hawaii, Dr. Dressler studied Animal Physiology and received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Davis before earning his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Cornell University. After practicing at Killewald Animal Hospital in Amherst, New York, he returned to his home state, Hawaii, to practice at the East Honolulu Pet Hospital before heading home to Maui to open his own hospital. Dr. Dressler consults both dog lovers and veterinary professionals, and is sought after as a speaker on topics ranging from the links between lifestyle choices and disease, nutrition and cancer, and animal ethics. His television appearances include “Ask the Vet” segments on local news programs. He is the author of The Dog Cancer Survival Guide: Full Spectrum Treatments to Optimize Your Dog’s Life Quality and Longevity. He is a member of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Hawaii Veterinary Medical Association, the American Association of Avian Veterinarians, the National Animal Supplement Council and CORE (Comparative Orthopedic Research Evaluation). He is also an advisory board member for Pacific Primate Sanctuary.
Updated: August 5th, 2019
Summary
Dr. Demian Dressler, best-selling author of “The Dog Cancer Survival Guide”, explains exactly what to do when you find a lump on your dog.
One of the most common comments that readers post on this blog goes something like this: “Help! Found a lump on the dog… What do I do now? The lump is (description) and is on my dog’s (body part). Is it anything to worry about?”
It helps to widen back and look at lumps in dogs generally to help clarify this topic. What’s the number one cause of dog death, if we exclude euthanasia? Dog cancer. How does dog cancer most commonly look to the naked eye? It looks like a lump.
When we find a lump on a dog, this should be a red flag. A certain reaction should be happening in the mind of the dog lover. First, both veterinarians and dog guardians should know the number one most dangerous health problem that exists for dogs, the most likely problem that could take a dog away… cancer.
We have been negligent in spreading this information to dog guardians. And by “we”, I include the group I am a member of: veterinarians. Vets should have this information and be spreading it in the same way we talk about parvo and heartworm disease.
For some reason we don’t. Perhaps it is because bringing up cancer in a discussion feels a little out of bounds since we don’t want to upset our clients. Or it could be that there has not been a marketing push like there is for parvo vaccination or for heartworm disease. Since we have access to preventatives in these cases, pharmaceutical companies make a point to help spread the word about these diseases.
This is not wrong, of course. Why not protect a dog from a problem when it is prudent to do so? (The vaccination debate is discussed elsewhere…)
So why would a guardian wonder what to do if a lump popped up? Clearly, if a woman found a lump in her breast, she would most likely be at the doctor’s promptly. Why? Because there has been enough press on breast cancer that finding the lump would raise a red flag, sparking the thought that breast cancer happens.
But in veterinary medicine, there is a mental disconnect between lumps in dogs and cancer, in spite of the statistics.
The answer to the question of what to do if a lump is found on a loved dog is this: go to your vet and get it checked! Get it aspirated, get it biopsied, get the data you need!
Can a vet diagnose a lump by looking at it? Very occasionally, but usually not. Can a vet diagnose a lump by squeezing it? Very occasionally, but usually not.
One of my pet peeves (sorry, bad pun) is the diagnosis of a benign fatty tumor based on looking and touching alone. Soft, squishy bumps under the skin could indeed be harmless lipomas. But, they could also be dangerous growths like mast cell tumors, hemangiopericytomas, subcutaneous blood filled hemangiosarcomas, or liposarcomas. These all feel soft and squishy.
This brings a case to mind. Three weeks ago, a client brought her dog in to have a lump checked out. This had been previously diagnosed as a harmless lipoma at another veterinary hospital. It felt soft and squishy.
A fine needle aspirate was done on the growth at my hospital. I inserted a syringe with a needle in the growth, and pulled back on the plunger. Did fat enter the needle hub, which is what a fatty tumor would yield? No. The syringe filled with blood.
This was no lipoma. Blood filled swellings have their list of possibilities too, but one of them is a hemangiosarcoma under the skin, a malignant cancer. And over the 6 months that this growth had slowly increased in size with nothing done, the mass had swelled to about 4 inches across.
Now we had a big problem to deal with that could have been caught a long time ago.
The bottom line is this: remember the dog cancer statistics. According to the National Canine Cancer Foundation, 1 in 3 dogs will contract cancer in their lifetime, and this number increases to 1 in 2 if the dog is more than 10 years of age.
Get dog lumps checked!
For more information on dog lumps, how they are diagnosed, and their complete treatment options, check out The Dog Cancer Survival Guide.
Best,
Dr D
Also see: Lumps On Dogs: When To Get Them Checked By A Veterinarian
Dr. Demian Dressler is internationally recognized as “the dog cancer vet” because of his innovations in the field of dog cancer management, and the popularity of his blog here at Dog Cancer Blog. The owner of South Shore Veterinary Care, a full-service veterinary hospital in Maui, Hawaii, Dr. Dressler studied Animal Physiology and received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Davis before earning his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Cornell University. After practicing at Killewald Animal Hospital in Amherst, New York, he returned to his home state, Hawaii, to practice at the East Honolulu Pet Hospital before heading home to Maui to open his own hospital. Dr. Dressler consults both dog lovers and veterinary professionals, and is sought after as a speaker on topics ranging from the links between lifestyle choices and disease, nutrition and cancer, and animal ethics. His television appearances include “Ask the Vet” segments on local news programs. He is the author of The Dog Cancer Survival Guide: Full Spectrum Treatments to Optimize Your Dog’s Life Quality and Longevity. He is a member of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Hawaii Veterinary Medical Association, the American Association of Avian Veterinarians, the National Animal Supplement Council and CORE (Comparative Orthopedic Research Evaluation). He is also an advisory board member for Pacific Primate Sanctuary.
Hi, I have a Maltese dog who’s 7 years old. I found out that she has this hard lump that’s the size of a marble and a shape of a marble(I touched and felt it). I can move it around side to side with my fingers. But my sister told me that she had it a few years ago and I just noticed it. My dad is saying that she had it for a few years, so he won’t let my dog go to the hospital. I kept telling him about the symptoms for cancers and tumors but he won’t listen to me anymore. My sister said that it was the size of a marble when she had one and it’s the same size. My Maltese doesn’t look like she’s in pain. She doesn’t go out often(about 3 times in a year?) and likes to eat little human food that’s on the ground( and I can’t even see where the food is). I don’t know if it’s a tumor or cancer. What if something did happen to her? I can’t bear this thought any longer anymore. Thank you.
Dear April,
Who owns this dog?? The best idea is to get every lump checked by a veterinarian. It may be benign, but one can’t tell by looking at it.
Best,
Dr D
hey my name is carissa and i found a lump about 3 months ago on the middle of my dogs chest, it has grown signifigatley. He scratches it sometimes, could it be bening fatty tumour? is there any chance of it being cancer? it is squishy but does not cause him any pain when i push on it. could it be a fatty tumour?
thank you
Took my Golden Retriever to the vet because he groans a lot. He groans when we scratch his ears or when he scratches his ears. (No infections, though) We thought that he just groaned when he stretched or laid down because humans groan when they stretch or lay down when it feels good. Got to thinking that maybe he groaned because he was in pain. Took him to the vet and she Xrayed his hips and back and he has a bad lumbar disc. It doesn’t seem to cause him pain at all. (beside the groans) We insisted on a blood test and it came back high calcium and low phosphorus with everything else completely normal. We retested 3 times to make sure there wasn’t an error. We tested for hyperparathyroidism and that came back normal. I know there are errors in lab results, so we may retest, again, as the vet has checked all of the most common places for cancer (xrays, aspirations, etc) The vet has sent all of the xrays and lab results to a group of vets she belongs to for advice on what to do next, as my dog has NO symptoms whatsoever. Waiting on that. But, I am wondering what are your thoughts on this. I did read about lumps, and he has had a lump for years on his upper back, but it hasn’t grown or anything. Called the vet and she is in an emergency, so left a message and am waiting to hear back from her. What do you think? Could the levels just be normal? The vet said no, but stranger things have happened. Also, even though Addison’s doesn’t normally have low phosphorus, we may test for that.
Dear Pam,
you are welcome!!
Dr D
Dear Chris,
To answer your question, the pathologist will give a mitotic index, so that is usually routine on the biopsy report, along with the grade of the tumor.
As to bad feelings like guilt, it is not your fault. Very few of us would be suspicious of a bump on a young dog like this, including many vets.
Imaging a language you have yet to learn. Do you feel guilty? Of course not. You simply do not have the data. Before you didn’t know about this (cancer incidence), and now you do. End of story. Now get your Dog Cancer Survival Guide so you can start getting busy!
Best,
Dr D
We found a lump our our puppy’s snout and we thought it was the result of a prick from raspberry bushes or some such thing. After it grew a bit, and 2 months later, we got it checked. It was a mast cell tumour. It was removed four days ago and we are waiting on the labs for grading. Given the position of the tumour, our vet could not get a very wide excision all around. (We wanted her to have a nose, for example.)
Is it a matter of course for the vet to order a test for “mitotic index” as you write about in another post? Or is that something we should have requested? Too late to do so?
Of course, we are wracked with guilt for not having acted earlier and wonder how much earlier detection would have helped.
Our pup is 8 months old and we saw it at 5 months or so.
thankyou for the information
Almost 4 years ago, our English Bully, Mia had an angry red lesion/bump on her lip, it intensified in redness and seemed to cause her some discomfort over a short period of time, I took her to the vet, a biopsy was done and pathology returned “nothing, clear” but I left with a very uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach and returned less than a week later asking that the growth be removed. When the tissue from the excision was sent to pathology it returned as T cell lymphoma. Subsequently it spread to the lymphnode but was inoperable, chemo and radiation kept Mia in remission for three + years, we’ve recently found similar lesions on her lips and upper gum area but will not be treating with chemo or radiation. She’s 12 now actually nearly 13 and is not up for that fight! My recommendation is follow your instincts always! and always have tissue analyzed and when removing a growth even if it appears to be a “fatty tumor” ask or insist that the vet get the best possible margins he/she can.
It’s EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to have any suspicious lump examined and followed up on as soon as possible.
I found a mass on the neck of our sweet little beagle (just shy of 12 years old, healthy otherwise) at the beginning of June this year (she’d had a mysterious bout of major pain in her neck 2 weeks prior, helped by Rimadyl, we thought it could have been rupture of a disc but she improved for a short time), had her looked at within days of finding this lump by a surgeon and she completely stumped the surgeon and the pathologists because this tumor came back inconclusive, but the CAT scan showed spots on her lungs, a sure sign of cancer. So during the appointment to have the mass removed they did an ultrasound of her belly to make sure they hadn’t missed anything, and there was a problem with her spleen- again, biopsy was inconclusive!
The decision was made to remove the spleen and the neck mass and during that surgery the surgeon found another large mass in her intestine- pathology finally came back with the diagnosis of Hemangiosarcoma. We were so devastated, after reading up on and being told about this aggressive cancer.
Less than 2 weeks of recovery from her surgery, i found a mass on her shoulder, she hadn’t even gotten the staples removed from her incisions yet.
Life expectancy with Hemangiosarcoma is literally days. From the time she first showed signs of illness to the day she had a seizure, was just short of 2 months exactly. We had to say good-bye to our puppy 4 days after she had the staples removed from her incisions. Wish we’d had more time.
Get lumps checked ASAP! Some get luckier than we did. I wish you all well. Thank you for reading our story, we’re still grieving.
I found a lump on my dog and had it looked at right away. It was taken off and sent to pathology – it came back as extraskeletel soft tissue osteosarcoma. Thank goodness I had it taken off right away. We have done more surgery to get a “wider margin” although they did feel the vet had the whole tumor. Next we will start chemotherapy. This shows the importance of visiting the vet immediately when you find a lump. This type of cancer is considered pretty rare – many vets have never seen it before – and many oncologists have only seen a few in their years of practice. Early detection is what is going to save my dog for a longer life – WE ARE GOING TO BEAT THIS MONSTER!!!!