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On September 19, 1992, I
found Bullet at the local SPCA animal shelter. He was 18 months old and
weighed 58 pounds. My first puppy!
I learned quickly why so many
Siberians show up in shelters - they are willful, high-energy and spend
their lives on a quest to find a hole in the fence, a door that's not
been closed securely, a dropped leash... their wanderlust is
insatiable! It's a very good thing that shelters are now educating
people about the personality of the Siberian before placing them. Yes
they are beautiful but living with a Siberian requires a particular
type of personality and a caretaker with a particular understanding of
the breed and the bond. As I read in a book about Siberians shortly
after adopting
Bullet, "If you want an owner-slave relationship with a dog, don't get
a Siberian!"
Bullet and I enjoyed many years of
adventure. We traveled the east
coast from home base near New York City, down to the Chesapeake Bay to
visit friends and up to Lake Placid for dog
sledding. We hiked, trained, learned agility (both of us), bicycled,
went camping and snow shoeing... he was a wonderful companion and a
true friend.
On July 17th, 2000, at
9+ years old,
Bullet was diagnosed with multicentric lymphoma.
He had chemotherapy
the next day and went into remission right away.
Bullet had a chemotherapy protocol that is no longer used called
VELCAP-L, using the agents Vincristine, El-Spar, Cytoxan,
Adriamycin and Prednisone. L stands for Long, as in 75 weeks long!
Bullet had treatments every 2-3 weeks for a year and a half. Such long
protocols are rarely, if ever, used anymore. Most protocols run only 16
- 25 weeks.
Bullet
had side
effects
but recovered each time. During the course of his treatment, there were
many times when I had to re-evaluate my decision to continue with
treatment. I was very committed to a promise that he would never
suffer.
The side effects set him back, he
clearly didn't feel well, but I believe he felt as I might if I had a
cold or the flu. I decided on
his behalf, as we all must do for our pups, that as long as he was not
in pain (in my best estimation) and as long as there was a good chance
that the side effects
would be short lived, he could tolerate some discomfort.
After
Bullet was
diagnosed with cancer, I developed a diet and
supplement regimen for him that I hoped would give him the best chance
of
surviving the disease. Carbohydrates feed the cancer, not the dog, so
they were omitted from his diet entirely. Fatty acids feed the dog not
the cancer, so these were increased. Bullet is in a very
small percentage of dogs to be
considered lymphoma survivors.
More
than a year after
treatment ended, Bullet was diagnosed with two heart conditions:
dilated cardiomyopathy and atrial fibrillation. Although these
conditions can result from
chemotherapy due to a drug called Adriamycin (doxorubicin), it was not
clear in Bullet's case whether the drug was to
blame or
if
he would have developed these conditions in any case. His heart
conditions appeared almost two years after chemotherapy had ended.
On
November 20th, 2004, I lost
Bullet to severe renal failure. He was
nearly 14 years old. Bullet was one shining
moment
that lasted 12 years, 2 months and a day. To
me, he was the most perfect creature that ever existed.
Through
the book "Help
Your Dog
Fight Cancer,"
Bullet's story
is helping
thousands of dogs with cancer and thousands of caretakers who are
living with, caring for and loving dogs with cancer. And the Magic
Bullet
Fund is my boy's legacy. The fund gives dogs with cancer a chance to
survive and follow in Bullet's
big pawprints.
Laurie
Kaplan
In loving memory
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