Stewart

Stewart was a 12 yr. old male collie/sheltie mix - distance telephone communication.

When Michelle called me, she had a feeling that there was something else wrong with Stewart’s persistant but inconsistent limp in his front right leg. If it was arthritis, it wasn’t consistent despite several visits to the vet and reassurances that all was well and simply a by-product of advancing age. When, I connected with Stewart, what he showed me immediately struck me with fear. I saw his leg like a computer-graphic x-ray photo. There was a blackening of the bone from the elbow up with black root-like shoots extending upward towards shoulder. Through years of personal experience, when I see this type of image it is often indicative of a possible cancer. Stewart continues to describe the pain that he often feels in the leg, which is quite different from the arthritis he feels in his joints. He even shares an approximate time, from his recollection, when this pain began. 

Throughout the next couple of hours, I continued to communicate with not only Stewart, but also with his ‘family-mates’ of two other shelties. One of them even notes that they have detected a strange smell emanating from Stewart’s affected limb – something, I have found, that is not at all uncommon in many animals. They can literally smell cancer.

Of course I am not able to diagnose nor definitively tell Michelle and her husband that it is actually cancer that Stewart has – I am afterall, not a veterinarian, but I do share with them what he has so clearly shown me and do encourage them with my strongest conviction to seek veterinary help immediately and to insist on more tests including an x-ray. They do so the next day and although the vet is reluctant to do some of the tests, again stating that it is probably only arthritis that is bothering Stewart, they are done. The results come back. The vet is stunned. Stewart has bone cancer in his right front leg.

Thankfully however, the cancer has been caught early enough and with a new medical regime and under veterinary care, as of this writing, Stewart is still walking, and even occasionally running, over two years later. I am very grateful for not only his openness and sensitivity to his own body, but also to Michelle – who followed her gut and intuition and went further to discover the mystery behind her beloved dog’s ailment.