By Dr. Kerri Schwartz, Piggers’ Pals

I first met Piggers, then known as Sugar Pie in May 2003. She was brought into my hospital as a four week-old puppy that was so anemic from malnutrition and intestinal parasites that she was struggling to breathe. She was tiny; her whole body fit in the palm of my hand, and she was literally dying as I examined her. She needed a blood transfusion, oxygen therapy, and intravenous fluid therapy immediately to survive. Her owners who had brought her to me could not afford the extended care that she needed. They had just purchased her at a local flea market the previous day, and decided to put her to sleep. With that decision, this little puppy, who because of neglect, was minutes away from losing her life. I carried her to the treatment room, where the euthanasia solution had been drawn into a syringe, and was waiting for me to end this little puppy’s struggle to live. As I walked her back there, I will never forget pausing, looking at that little ball of fur in my hand. I watched her mouth gape open with every breath, trying to draw oxygen into her body.

I realized then that this little puppy had never been given a chance to live. It was my responsibility to try to give her that chance. I asked her owners if they would release her to my care, and that I would do my best to make her better, and find her a good home. They understood that she might not survive despite our best efforts, but they too wanted to give her a chance to live, so they signed her over to me. I gave her the transfusion and she spent the next two days on oxygen and IV fluids. At night, I took her home with me to give her the around-the-clock care she needed in order to survive. My staff tried to fit her with a better name with each day that she spent with us. Little Bit, Honey and Sweetie Pie were all names that I would see on her cage cards, but none of the names fit. I drew the line when one morning my receptionist had labeled her cage with Fatty Patty Pants. But by now, that little puppy was feeling better and she would dive into her food bowl when we went to feed her. So, she became Miss Piggy, and soon was lovingly called Piggers. Little did I know the journey I was about to start or the immensity of the friendship I had just begun. From the very first day that Piggers and I met, we were inseparable.

Shortly after Piggers turned two, I noticed a small growth on her neck. Up to this point she had been relatively healthy. She was always a little on the skinny side as many puppies are and would have occasional skin infection flare-ups. When I first noticed the growth, I was not too worried. It looked innocent enough, didn’t have the appearance of anything to be worried about and since she was so young, I told myself it was probably nothing. August 2005 was the beginning of what would become not only the most devastating experience of my life, but also a journey of cherished and shared experiences with my dog.  This all happened because of the cancer that would soon be diagnosed. While removing a skin mass was something that, as a veterinarian I have performed a thousand times, I did not hesitate to call Gulf Coast Veterinary Specialists in Houston to schedule an appointment with surgeon, Dr. Heidi Hottinger. I wanted to focus on being Piggers’ mom and not her doctor.

Piggers, never one to be easy, was playing the night before surgery and tore a ligament in her knee. So, the next day, she had two surgeries: one to repair her knee and the other to biopsy the skin mass. A couple of days passed while we waited for the biopsy results as Piggers began to heal. The day those results came in, my whole world changed. The biopsy revealed that the innocent looking growth on my dog was a high grade malignant melanoma, and the prognosis was guarded. Essentially, I was just told that my little two year-old dog had only three, maybe six months to live.

As we were staging her disease in preparation for chemotherapy to delay the spread of the cancer, a tumor was found already growing in her lung. Within only a matter of a few weeks from the initial finding of the skin mass, the cancer had already spread. I will never forget that day as it was the day when it really sunk in that I was going to lose my best friend. I just didn’t know when. And so began our battle with cancer; a path that would take us on numerous trips to New York City for cancer vaccine treatments, through two life-saving thoracotomies to remove diseased lung lobes and through five rounds of chemotherapy.

Life as a dog owner changed dramatically with that diagnosis, and things that are taken for granted when you have a healthy pet were forever altered. Since Piggers was always a little too thin, and too busy playing to be bothered with something as unexciting as eating, I had Dr. Hottinger put a feeding tube in her so that we could provide the optimal nutrition she would need to fight her cancer. That meant that Piggers now would need to wear clothes to cover her tube so that she could go about her busy schedule of playtime without inadvertently pulling out the tube. As Piggers’ mom, I suddenly found myself doing my dog’s clothes when it was laundry day.

She was fed three times a day with a liquid diet through the feeding tube. She could drink water on her own, but she soon became very used to her feedings and would come to me if she felt her tube needed readjusting. I think she enjoyed the convenience of getting her belly full without having to expend any energy that could otherwise be used to run and play. Through everything, Piggers greeted each day with a smile, a fighting spirit and love of life.

She lived to play, and did just that the entire time she was sick. To meet her, you would never know she was in the fight of her life. The only clue you would have were the telltale t-shirts and panties, as we called them, that covered her feeding tube. Most people just thought I dressed my dog in cute outfits.  Other than that, you would never know the fragile state of her health. She never once let her cancer define who she was or how she lived every day she was given.

Piggers amazed her doctors with how well she did at every point in her treatment. In late September 2005, Piggers had her first thoracotomy to remove the lung tumor. I remember being very hesitant to put her through such an invasive surgery. My thought was why hurt her if she is going to die anyway? But thanks to a long talk with her surgeon, Dr. Hottinger, I decided to try and Piggers handled that surgery well. I saw her only a few hours after surgery and she was already sitting up, happy to see her mom.

It was decided after she had recovered from surgery that we would go to New York to see Dr. Phil Bergman who was doing a clinical trial testing on an experimental melanoma DNA vaccine. It had shown very promising results. He agreed to treat Piggers with the vaccine, and we ended up making four subsequent trips to the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan to booster the vaccine.

Because Piggers was a little too big to fly without being placed in cargo, we made those trips together by car. Each trip was sixteen hundred miles, one way. And we did it a total of six times during the course of her illness.

In February 2006, during a routine checkup, a second lung tumor was discovered. Piggers spiked a high fever that would not respond to antibiotics. Again, Dr. Hottinger took Piggers to surgery, but this time the tumor had invaded the diaphragm and wrapped around major blood vessels by her heart. Because of the expert care of her surgeon, the tumor was able to be removed but its aggressive nature told us that if we were going to do chemo, we had to do it now. The second surgery was followed by five rounds of chemotherapy given by her oncologist, Dr. Janet Carreras, also of Gulf Coast Veterinary Specialists.

Five months later Piggers finished her chemotherapy, a milestone that none of us believed Piggers would live to see. In July 2006, Piggers was due for another vaccine booster, so off we went to New York. Soon after returning from that trip, I received a call from the Animal Medical Center telling me that they had chosen to honor Piggers as one of their Living Legends and we were invited to a party in Manhattan in her honor.

The Animal Medical Center is one of the country’s leading veterinary referral hospitals, and they see over 50,000 patients a year. When Piggers was chosen as one of their success stories, it was such an honor that there was no question in my mind about taking another 3,200 mile journey. Piggers was the life of the party.  She greeted everyone there with her smile and invited anyone who was interested to scratch her hind end.

She wore her I Love NY t-shirt and after the party we did a little sight-seeing in New York City. She loved that day because she got to be the center of attention, something she lived for. But that would be our last trip to New York.

When we returned home, Piggers’ doctors and I needed to make a decision about how to proceed with her cancer treatments. Since she had essentially outlived all the treatments we had planned, we decided to start a second vaccine trial with a melanoma vaccine developed at the University of Wisconsin. She received seven of the nine boosters involved with that trial when another lung tumor was found in November 2006. Only two weeks before, Piggers’ chest x-rays were normal, but the last tumor was growing at an alarming rate. Piggers still showed no signs of being sick, despite already having had fifty percent of her lungs removed from previous surgeries and a massive tumor in her remaining lung tissue. Despite Piggers’ valiant effort, I knew that as fast as the tumor was growing, she had only a couple of weeks to live. Surgery was not an option as it would leave her with too little functional lung space. Radiation and more chemo were still possible treatment options, but her cancer was growing too fast for anything to be truly effective. 

I made the decision on November 17th to let Piggers live her last few days without having to endure any more treatments. On November 29th 2006, Piggers lost her fight with melanoma at the age of three. She lived sixteen months from the time of diagnosis; a good year beyond anyone’s expectations. If it were not for the expert care she received from her team of specialists, Piggers would not have lived nearly as long or as well as she did, even with a veterinarian as her mom.

Long before I lost Piggers, I decided that the best way to honor her was to start a foundation that would help families in need to afford specialty level care. I want to help give them the gift of time with their pets that Piggers’ doctors gave me. That gift of time is something that I will never forget. It allowed Piggers and me the time to experience together once in a lifetime memories that I will carry with me forever. It bonded Piggers and me together in a way that is difficult for me to even put into words. Our journey throughout her illness changed me as a doctor and as a person, and I have a scruffy little dog named Piggers to thank for making me who I am today.

Piggers’ Pals Foundation is a non-profit organization  designed to assist families in need seek specialty level care for their pets. To learn more about the Piggers’ Pals or to make a donation, visit www.piggerspals.org.

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