Jackson has lumps and bumps

Jackson is an 8 year old Labrador/Spaniel cross who has a history of having lumps and bumps. His worried Mum contacted me with this query –

“Jackson is what I would describe as a “lumpy” dog- historically he’s had two lumps removed (one cancerous and one not cancerous- the latest one removed in July) and tomorrow he is going in for surgery yet again to remove another larger lump (which has some worrying cells in it- we haven’t had a biopsy yet but the initial results came back indicating that it was problematic).

I realise that you can’t give advice to an owner based on such scant information and without having seen the dog or know the history, but I’ve tried over the years to watch what Jackson (our dear dog) eats and have tried to do the right thing with what goes into his body. Now I feel very guilty that I may have caused his lumps through his diet!

I suppose what I’m wondering, is given a dog who seems to have a predisposition for lumps (benign or other) and given his age, would there be a supplement that you sell that might help him as he continues to age and which I could include in my order of Solo Vegetal?”

Black Labrador Jackson with lumps and bumps

The good news is that I heard back from Jackson’s Mum and he had his lump removed and it was purely a ‘fatty lump’ this time which means that it was benign and would not spread in his body or cause any further complications.

Fatty lumps are very common in elderly dogs and as your dog puts on weight, so too do these fatty lumps grow. The ones not to worry about tend to be non-painful to touch and feel like a mass of soft tissue under the skin (I always describe it as what I imagine a breast prosthesis would feel like, as when we remove them surgically, they come away in a neat enclosed bag of squidgy tissue!)
The worrying ones that Jackson had in the past tend to feel hard to the touch and could sometimes be painful. These would need immediate attention as they could be cancerous and spread in the body.

The advice I was able to give to Jackson’s Mum, was to keep him on as healthy a diet as possible that was fibre and nutrient packed to keep his weight down. This would naturally prevent the fatty lumps from growing; as well as add some healthy Omega 3’s like Vegetology algae oil to his diet for their anti-inflammatory effect.
We discuss this in further detail and have a bonus section on cancer in dogs in our PLANT-BASED DOG NUTRITION COURSE by Dr Clare Knottenbelt.

Jackson’s Mum confessed to him not being 100% plant-based but also feeding him some fish and meat-based foods even though he loved all foods that he was being fed. I reassured her that for his health, being semi-plant-based was still so much better and she did not have to have it perfect. I admired her telling me this and the fact that she was open-minded enough to consider plant-based for her sweet Jackson who means so much to her!

An exciting development for vets and nurses is a scanner that is ‘non-invasive’. This means that no painful needles are put into lumps on your dog that we really do not like doing as vets as it is painful. Even worse if you are an owner. A scanner that is placed on the lump and takes around 50 seconds to scan the area of concern before the images are sent to its digital labs, with results returned within a few minutes is fantastic news!

It can tell whether a mass is benign with up to 98% accuracy, meaning that no needles should be needed at all in the future. Thank goodness for advances in technology!