09/10/2025
Last Thursday, we had a “unicorn” morning! Ari and I were working rooms together and room after room was just filled with delightfulness. We saw 3 beautiful puppies! We had 2 golden retrievers (with perfectly golden personalities), a couple of sweet and easy kitties, and a wonderful old lab. There were no major illnesses, each patient was well-behaved, and every human we worked with that morning was a delight.
But that’s not how I’ll remember that day. Our very last appointment of the afternoon was my good friend, Blu, and he wasn’t looking very good. In my line of work, I’m used to hard conversations. I have to have them nearly every day. Through some cruel design defect, our animals nearly always precede us. And so it stands to reason that an animal hospital witnesses plenty of loss.
But this loss was different. Blu was a 5 year old goofball sweetheart of a yellow lab. He came to his family as a puppy during a time of personal grief and tragedy …and they adored him! We all adored him.
However, when Blu was just a few months old, his owner noticed a swelling on his jaw. We immediately proceeded to surgery. I removed as much of the mass along the jaw as I was able without compromising the integrity of the bone. We waited for weeks on biopsy results. The specimen was passed from one pathologist to the next and eventually ended up in the hands of a talented group at Cornell. The results were crushing. This sweet little 6 monh old puppy was diagnosed with an incredibly rare form of cancer (embryonic rhabdomyosarcoma or ERDS). In fact, it was so rare that at the time only 65 cases had ever been diagnosed (and Blu’s was only the 2nd case to ever be diagnosed on the skull/head). The prognosis was poor and we knew that this would show up again in his body somewhere at some point. And it did…on that Thursday that had started out so bright.
Blu didn’t look good. And his dad knew it. I could feel an obvious tumor in his abdomen and his gums were pale (the mass was likely bleeding internally). He was weak and struggled to get up but still managed to give me a few gentle kisses on my hand. There weren’t many words needed. This was a moment we all knew was coming but couldn’t imagine when looking at this dog that had such a short time ago looked so healthy. So happy. So goofy.
To Blu and every other dog out there that lives each day to the fullest. May there always be plenty of tennis balls, squirrels to chase, a milkbone or two, and of course a loving hand for belly rubs and chin scratches . 🐾
Dr. Cory Ellis
Fort Mill Animal Hospital
