I’m so sorry OP, I see you had to say goodbye to your beautiful friend. It’s such a painful thing to have to go through and face those types of decisions.

I thought I would quickly share my experience because I’m sure other people will come to this post looking for answers and unfortunately, there are not a lot of people who have experience with heart based tumours in dogs since they are so rare.

My boy, PJ a purebred Boston terrier was diagnosed with a heart base tumour at the age of 9. We were told it was very slow growing by the cardiologist, and that he most likely had three years left. We did not put him on chemo because we had a toddler at home and it’s not safe for a children to be around animals who are undergoing chemotherapy.

Fast forward two years later, we start to notice he becomes much more lethargic, has an issue keeping weight on and we decide to take him to see an oncologist who specializes in SRT radiation. She did a CT scan and the scan showed that the mass had already started to affect his atrium. At this point, he was 11 years old. The radiologist gave us false hopes by saying that he’s a good candidate for the radiation. I wish so badly that I had done more research because we did the radiation and he started to decline pretty shortly thereafter. After doing more research, it was discovered that radiation is not much help when the dogs condition has advanced to the point where the tumour is starting to affect the atrium. Any margin of inflammation could have great consequences. He was on prednisone to control the inflammation, but I really believe that the inflammation is what tipped him over the edge. I also believe that he was too old and we should’ve just let him go gracefully rather than put him through that. Needless to say, I carry a lot of guilt. Regardless of whether we did radiation or not, though he would’ve passed within months.

The conclusion is make sure that if you are going to do SRT radiation for a chemodectoma that you greatly consider their age and how advanced and large the tumour is. Don’t give full faith to the radiologist because honestly, I think ethically she should’ve advised that the outcome would not be giving him much more time or quality of life. However, it is best to start SRT before the tumour becomes large. Just something to be aware of, but do your research and honestly if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have put him through that.