Histiocytoma in dogs

Many years ago, when Miko and Sami were pups, Miko developed this mysterious lump on the inside of her hear about the size of the end of a pencil eraser.  Sami, the resident ear cleaner seemed to be drawn to it and would lick it constantly. So, we took Miko to the vet only to find out it was a non cancerous tumor most often found on young dogs.  Our vet said that over a period of time, usually a few months, the tumor would go away and it did.  Well, that was a little over 3 years ago.

About a month ago, I noticed this tiny pink spot on the left nostril.  I didn't get too excited about it as Sami used to have a black nose before she got sick and her nose went from black to pink in no time flat.  It happened so fast, I can't recall it even happening, it's just like one day she had a pink nose.  Now, I'm sure it didn't happen that fast, but with all that was going on when she first got sick and the nervous wreck it made me, I guess I was just too concerned about the possibility of losing her that I didn't even notice the color change.  So, I just kept a close eye on the pink spot on Miko's nose.

It just so happened that both were due for their yearly shots this month.  We had to change vets 2 years ago because our vet was wanting to retire.  He tried to get a young vet to join his practice and take over when the time came to retire.  Well, he had no luck as most wanted to join a practice with several other vets as this gave them more options on just how many hours they wanted to be there.  So, he moved his practice to one of the larger clinics with several vets and this gave us the opportunity to try the different vets to see which one we wanted to see our pets.  We have chosen our new vet, but I had recently found out that our old vet was still there 1 day a week and I decided to schedule Miko and Sami with him as it would probably be the last time.  I had scheduled it for next week, but the pink spot on Miko's nose suddenly changed.  It got much larger and now it felt like a lump.  So, I moved their appointment to today, still with our old vet.

I was telling my daughter about it and she got to looking around on the internet and found out about this one dog that had the same pink spot on it's nose and it ended up being histiocytoma.  I had completely forgotten about the incident with her ear and it made me a little relieved to see that.  By time I took her in today, it already didn't seem quite as big as the day before.  My vet confirmed  that it is histiocytoma  He said it didn't look infected or anything, so right now we just keep an eye on it.  If it starts looking infected or gets any bigger in the next couple weeks, we might have to have it removed.  Here is a picture of what it looks like now. 

Luckily it doesn't seem to bother her at all.

Two is more fun then one.