When Sharon Voss-Northrup noticed that her oldest dog, Shadow, a black Lab mix rescued from a high-kill shelter, had a distended abdomen and was a bit wobbly, she rushed the dog to their family vet. The doctors discovered a strange mass near Shadow’s spleen, liver, and intestines, and Shadow was sent to an emergency hospital for immediate surgery. The mass, it turned out, was a blood clot formed in response to a tumor on Shadow’s liver and several more in her spleen, which ultimately had to be removed. Though the vet’s work was successful, the trauma of Shadow’s surgery caused significant blood loss; to save her life, the vets relied on a blood transfusion.
