Leeroy's Giant Lump
Leeroy is a 42kg 2yr old male American Bulldog. Big, strong, calm and gentle. He wasn't at all bothered by the unusual large growth on his right rump. It was dense, hard, crusty, dry, painfree .... and enormous!

The tumour had grown quite quickly and could possibly be malignant.  It involved a large area of skin at it's base, and a wide margin of skin would have to be removed to ensure complete excision of abnormal cells.
This gives the surgeon a problem - there is not enough skin left to close the wound easily.
The tumour was excised with wide margins which included part of the muscle deep to the tumour.  The skin around the wound was detached from its deeper attachments for several cm in all directions to make it more mobile. It was then gradually brought together and closed using skin staples.  Even with all this skin re-positioning there was some tension at the centre of the wound and we expected to result in a partial breakdown of the wound during the healing process.

Here is the wound 2 weeks after surgery (below). The centre part has broken down, but is granulating well and will heal over 3-4 weeks. This sort of healing (by secondary intention) is messy but not painful, just a bit itchy. It just needs to be kept clean by daily

A week later (picture below) the inflammation is reducing and the hole closing rapidly.

Over the next 6 weeks the wound closed completely and the hair grew back leaving hairless area about 3cm diameter (awaiting picture).
We didn't have funds for a pathological examination to identify the type of tumour but there has been no recurrence for 6 months post surgery.

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