Henry is one of those dogs who has a too-long track record of overcoming adversity. In the process, though, he has gathered an entire family of humans who love him and care about how he is doing. For this, my husband Jamie and I feel incredibly grateful! And I also feel a bit remiss that I haven’t kept this blog more current for Henry’s fans. We’ve been a bit distracted around here. The last year has posed some health challenges for the humans in our family, and Henry has been our steadfast companion throughout, providing comfort, perspective, laughs and even more reasons to go to the beach.
This dog knows challenges. If you’ve read any of the previous Henry blogs here, you know that he has encountered some serious obstacles in his life, and he came through them with incredible resilience. He reminds us every day how to face challenges with grace and in-the-moment zen.
So here’s Henry’s update…and it’s a long one! Before you feel a “TLDR” coming on, I’ll give you the top-level notes in a bad-news sandwich:
- Henry had a wonderful reunion with his OTAT family (pictures included)!
- Henry has cancer, and his care at this point is all palliative in nature. Or so we thought, anyway, because…
- While we waited weeks for appointments with various veterinary specialists, we put him on a Chinese medicine/herbal regimen — under the guidance of two WONDERFUL holistic veterinarians — that appears to be shrinking his tumor (albeit with some drama and much to the amazement of everyone involved). We are cautiously optimistic.
First, a bit of joy.
A backyard, a ball and a bunch of people who love Henry
On Monday we gathered, for the first time since Henry (Blue Valentine)’s adoption day, with his wonderful foster couples from One Tail at a Time Portland and his adoption counselor, April. Mimi and Peter were the people who cared for Henry throughout most his complex leg surgeries and convalescence two years ago, and Justin and Gabie had been fostering him for several weeks just before we adopted him. We all met in Justin and Gabie’s back yard (Gabie is out of town, so she joined by video). Henry’s former foster dog brother, Spock, was there too.
Henry was happy to show off his now-strong legs and his Border Collie-esque ball chasing skills, much to the marvel of these people who had kindly carried him around in a lift harness for six months and watched him re-learn how to walk on his casts and tender, repaired front legs.
It really is amazing to see him now — fluffy ears and tail and body fringe blowing in the breeze as he jumps and twists and runs full-tilt across a grassy back yard. (I joked that if anyone asks me his breed, I say he’s a “Fringed Collie.” )
We took pictures. April, in particular, snapped some really beautiful shots of Henry.
Henry amused himself with his ball for a couple of hours as the humans caught up on dog and human history.
Once again proving his interest in physics (see the beach video below), Henry took to rolling the ball downhill, chasing it and running it back up to the top (repeat, repeat, repeat). This dog is better at amusing himself than any dog I’ve ever known. He likes it when we throw the ball, but he doesn’t really require that of us in order to have a grand time playing.
It was great to see his OTAT family’s smiling faces — without the masks we all wore when we last met. And Henry followed suit. I swear he wore a smile most of the time he was there.
This was a truly special day, and we want to say thank you to Justin (and virtual Gabie) for being our hosts for two-and-a-half hours and to Mimi, Peter and April for making the trip to join us and give Henry some adoration.
Now for the rest of the story…
Henry’s bout with cancer: round 1
Last September (2022), just as we were emerging from the human health drama here, we noticed a bump forming on Henry’s hindquarters. We took him to the vet for a needle biopsy that came back inconclusive. The lump continued to grow. A second needle biopsy was still inconclusive. Then it burst. Henry needed surgery as soon as possible to remove the mass, otherwise we’d face the risk of infection.
We hated to put him through yet another surgery, but without it, depending on the type of tumor it was, it could spread. He came through surgery with flying colors (he knows recovery). The mass turned out to be a fibrosarcoma — cancer — and the surgeon said he mostly got good margins, but it was very close on one side due to proximity to vital organs. Fibrosarcomas come in different grades — the least invasive ones are slow-growing, and removing them is curative. This was our hope. Others are more invasive and tend to recur in the same place a few months later.
Henry recovered quickly, his wound healed and his fluffy hair grew back. We thanked our lucky stars he’d beat the odds once again.
All through autumn he was his usual playful, sweet self. Every day when I went to my office to work, Henry would lie down by the sliding glass door to look out over the yard, then retire under my desk keeping my feet warm. Life was good. Calm. Healing.
We made trips to the beach on sunny days (we only live about 45 minutes away) and while he mostly focused on his ball (see video below) Henry enjoys meeting other dogs and he gets along with most everyone. He is particularly good with shy dogs and nervous dogs and always seems to have a calming influence on them.
Perhaps it was time to adopt another dog to keep Henry company?
Enter Mackie the griff
As it happened, a friend from the Wirehaired Pointing Griffon rescue community was looking to re-home one of her three dogs. She was facing some health challenges that made it difficult for her to deal with that many big, rambunctious dogs. She reached out to us, knowing we’d had Wirehaired Pointing Griffons before (we know the quirks of the breed), and asked if we would consider being a new home for Mack (Mackie) — her 3.5-year-old Griff she’d taken in as a rescue when he was 6 months old.
It seemed a perfect opportunity had dropped in our lap.
Mackie and Henry got along quite well from the get-go and Henry served as a calming presence to Mackie’s nervous energy as he gradually adapted to living in our home. OK, sometimes Henry would get frustrated with Mackie’s shenanigans (anyone who knows Griffs knows that gonzo, goofball shenanigans come with the territory) and Border Collie mixes tend to like to round up excited critters and get them in line. But the two dogs also seemed to enjoy and take comfort in each other’s company. They ran in the field together, played chase and often slept side by side (even the occasional spoon). Henry helped us teach Mackie the house rules and how not to freak out when we left the two of them alone. (Henry overcame his own separation anxiety back in the day.)
Henry’s Cancer redux…And some miraculousness
We’d only had Mackie for about a month, just before Christmas, when we felt another lump on Henry’s bum. We couldn’t get him in to see any specialists until the new year.
X-ray, ultrasound and CT scan indicated the tumor was fast-growing and rapidly infiltrating his pelvic area. The surgeon said it was too close to vital organs to surgically remove it completely, and he recommended radiation therapy to shrink the tumor. It would be another few weeks before we could get in to see an oncologist.
In the meantime, we consulted with two wonderful holistic veterinarians — Dr. Leslie McIntyre of Sage Veterinary Alternatives, a Chinese/herbal medicine vet in Bend we’d worked with before for previous dogs’ illnesses — and Dr. Karen Davies at Two Rivers Veterinary Clinic in Portland. They started him on vitamins, supplements and a Chinese medicine “herbal chemo” powder to try to slow down the tumor growth until we could get him in for oncology care.
During the weeks between his CT scan and his appointment with the oncologist, the tumor miraculously started shrinking! We could barely even feel it from the outside. His oncologist said he wouldn’t have recognized it as the same dog based on the CT scan he saw from a month before. That was the good news.
The bad news hit a lot harder: the tumor was smaller, but it was still there. And being an aggressive form of tumor, no matter what we did, it would be palliative. The tumor was too involved with Henry’s vital organs, and the only goal of radiation treatments (which would involve sedating him for multiple daily or weekly treatments over a period of time) would be to shrink it enough to keep him comfortable — without much hope of getting rid of it completely. And it would be another month before we could start radiotherapy.
WE WERE DEVASTATED.
happy, playful Henry gives us hope
All this time, despite the lump, Henry was eating well and playing and running around and acting like absolutely nothing was wrong. With the tumor seemingly under control from the herbal regimen — and him seeming perfectly happy and comfortable (which was the entire goal of palliative therapy anyway) — we decided, along with consulting the oncologist and holistic vets, that staying the course with the herbal regimen would be the least stressful option for Henry. If the tumor started growing again, we’d consider palliative radiotherapy.
“Henry has always been an outlier, beating the odds time and time again, maybe he’s one of the lucky ones?” we hoped.
When it comes to hope, I go there pretty easily. But after so much family loss in the last couple of years, I’ve learned to maintain a back-of-mind awareness of the worst-case-scenario too. A couple of weeks ago Henry’s tumor suddenly started growing again — very quickly. He had one bad day of obvious pain, then suddenly, it ruptured. Massively. What was a lump was now a lump with a huge crater in the middle of it.
Radiotherapy was no longer an option, as it would only exacerbate an open wound. We were told the wound itself, being made of cancerous tumor tissue with altered immune response, isn’t likely to heal over. His vet put him on antibiotics and topicals to help clean and calm the wound, and we got more Chinese herbs to help reduce the oozing.
His holistic vets recommended another consult with the surgeon to see if they could, at least, close the wound. We called his OTAT family and delivered the news. We set a date to get together.
A bittersweet time
While Henry was being all happy, playful, eating well and largely leaving the wound alone, Mackie suddenly became very agitated and completely obsessed with the open wound. (This happens sometimes with dogs, unfortunately.) He wouldn’t leave Henry alone and Henry was getting stressed out (as were we humans) trying to fend him off.
During one of our regular check-ins with Mackie’s previous dog mom, she asked about Henry. I explained the situation. She’d experienced this herself with injured dogs before and knew the stress it causes for everyone. She offered to take Mackie back to allow Henry some quiet time with us at this critical moment. And the timing was good for her — she had recovered well from her illness over the past four months, was feeling much stronger and had been missing Mackie terribly.
We knew it was the right thing to do. But it was also a hard thing to do, as we had become quite attached to that goofy little Griff. Mackie’s return to his former home would not only give Henry and us some respite, it would also give her a chance to see if she could make the three-dog situation work in her home once more.
She lives about four hours away, so we met halfway. Mackie was clearly thrilled to see his other human family, and they were thrilled to see him. It felt sad, but it also felt right.
And the tumor is shrinking again!
As for Henry — he’s loving being the only dog again, getting our undivided attention. He’s eating well, trotting around the pasture and playing with his ball. He has his sweet, chill, relaxed personality back, now that he’s not having to watch his back constantly. He doesn’t particularly like the flexible cone that keeps him from licking the wound on occasion, but he tolerates it amazingly well and considers it a useful tool in rolling his ball around. (If there is such a thing as a past life, I swear Henry must have been a physicist.)
There’s no way to bandage the wound where it’s located. So we fashioned some boxer shorts with velcro waist straps and lined them with pantyliners. His tail goes out the fly. He doesn’t seem to mind them at all, and he looks pretty stylish, particularly when his cone flips inside out and looks like a matching cape. Compared to the casts and lift harnesses he had for his leg surgeries, boxers and a cone/cape are pretty easy, I guess.
Over the past week his tumor/wound has started shrinking again. So much so, in fact, that his surgeon, who examined him on Tuesday, said he no longer felt the tumor bulging out internally or touching his organs. The pelvis seemed clear and the tumor felt mostly superficial. It’s small enough now that surgery is once again a possibility — but he said it made sense to just keep doing what we’re doing to manage the wound and see if we can shrink the tumor even more.
Much to everyone’s amazement, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that his body might get rid of it altogether. The holistic treatment appears to be killing the tumor and his body is pushing the dead bits out. It’s not pretty, but it’s manageable. And while we know this thing could come roaring back, Henry is an outlier. He’s amazingly resilient. And it gives us a sense of cautious optimism.
in the meantime, Henry’s becoming a celebrated artist
I’ll write more in a future blog, but for the past year and a half, my husband, Jamie, an artist himself, has been collecting Henry’s unique sculptural works made of nested cardboard toilet paper tubes. Jamie’s critiques and commentary are hilarious. Check it out on Instagram: @henry_blue_artist.
Maple Reach 
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