Hicca-(P)update

   

     It was a week ago yesterday that a rather large (baseball sized) tumor was removed from my boy Hiccapup and sent to a lab for testing. I was told to sit tight...that it'd take a week to 10 to get results back. I called on day 5 to ask if they might please put a fire under it, as Hics's mass had come back full throttle and whatever we needed to do, we need not delay.
     Next day my vet called with the report:
     The good news-- it's not a carcinoma (i.e. cancer). Instead, it's a hematoma (i.e. blood mass). The report speculated that Hics must've endured some blunt trauma that left him with a globule attaching itself to a rib (best I understood the big words). Bottom line, according to them: it's benign, and for this we thank God.
     The challenge however, is that the mass (removed entirely last week) has come back every bit as large and now somewhat tougher to the touch, which means we get to do this same procedure all over again (including the check-writing part); yet we still don't know what's causing it.
     Otherwise, (Mrs. Lincoln) Hics is happily healing, though his mental health is, well... questionable.
     Ever since the ordeal (I'm now 2 for 2 with dogs sporting stitches with Rosey, his mama, just having been spayed the week before)...well, Hics has been a little more alpha than usual. I kid you not. As if showing off a naked lady tattoo Hics is proud of his stitchin'! (Given the placement, his stitches are more obvious than Rosey's and boy does he love to sport 'em.) Granted, with 16 goats in the mix it's not hard to imagine someone, somewhere along the way accidentally butting my boy, but personally, I don't think so. Truth be told, Hics is downright stupid when it comes to food, having no fear particularly when it comes to TJ's bowl (major alpha no-no). For reasons I can't get my mind around, Hics's favorite sport (after wolfing down his own) is tipping TJs bowl over so as to ("Ooops! Did I hit your bowl?") accidentally spill things on the ground for himself. TJ (my uber alpha, slow-as-molasses male who weighs somewhere around 150) is the slowest eating dog to ever walk the planet... (When you're TJs size, guess you get to take your time...) But despite this yo-de-yo demeanor,  TJ's half eaten bowl is an insatiable temptation for Hics.  So what if you get your head handed to you by your big-headed uncle? Who cares if you get wrestled to the ground by your sister? Not Hics. For reasons I cannot begin to comprehend, Hics has an eating disorder that started in his head and remains there to this day. Half his meals are eaten sideways, belly up or in some other submissive posture -- and to Hics way of thinking, well, it seems a fair exchange.
     Rosey and Rosebud have their own ways of dodging and dealing, being equally annoyed by a guy who eats twice as fast as they do and four times as fast as TJ. (Suffice it to say, he IS on his way to being the world's largest Pyr. Mark my words.)
     Bottom line: my baby boy Hics is either an idiot, or he's Cujo in the making. (Jury's still out.) Any blunt trauma (if this is, indeed what happened) does not appear to have come from goats (after all my pygmies pale in comparison to his every growing size, plus they love him...Why his best bud in the whole wide world is Charlie- a goat that shares his coloring... adopted as his own from the day it was born. Not sure if the goat thinks he's a dog or if my dog thinks he's a goat, but there are more than a couple of mentally challenged critters on this farm (and that's not counting the blonde).