brain tumor treatments for dogs

Hi,
Our dog was recently diagnosed with a non-cancerous brain tumor, and our vet
gave us a few options:
- Surgery
- Radiation therapy
- Medication (prednisone, phenobarbitol) to control swelling and seizures,
but which don't treat the tumor itself.

I was wondering if anyone else out there has dealt with this, and what their
experience was. We're especially curious about the radiation therapy, since
that seems to involve the least pain to the dog. There's just not a lot of
research or information on it.

Thanks,
J's owner

"Mad Habit" wrote in message

> Hi,
> Our dog was recently diagnosed with a non-cancerous brain tumor, and our
> vet
> gave us a few options:
> - Surgery
> - Radiation therapy
> - Medication (prednisone, phenobarbitol) to control swelling and seizures,
> but which don't treat the tumor itself.
>
> I was wondering if anyone else out there has dealt with this, and what
> their
> experience was. We're especially curious about the radiation therapy,
> since
> that seems to involve the least pain to the dog. There's just not a lot
> of
> research or information on it.
>

We just lost one of our dogs in September to an inoperable brain tumor-- a
meningioma. Our situation is different as her tumor, though non-cancerous,
was at the base of her brain and inoperable. Our options were radiaiton
therapy or medication (pheno and pred). Given her age and other health
conditions, we decided against radiation therapy and did the medication to
make her as comfortable as possible for her remaining weeks.

For us radiation therapy would have been 18 treatments-- 3x per week for 6
weeks. She would have been sedated each and every time. And, it was only
going to increase her life expectancy by 4 months. So given her other
health problems, her age, the fact that we'd have to drag her 3 hours to
the oncologist and sedate her 18 times, we felt it best to make her as
comfortable as possible for her remaining time with us. The medication was
able to do that for her remaining time and she ran and chased the birds in
our yard as she always had. And we were able to spend some quality time
with her.

I think, for us at least, if surgery had been an option, we would have done
that. But, it wasn't. Sorry you are going through this-- it's a difficult
decision.

Peggy