Last summer over Labor Day weekend I noticed Grizzly was drinking more water than usual and peeing a lot more. We were at the beach, so at the time I dismissed it as being caused by beach time and drinking salt water from the ocean.
A couple months went by and the water intake/peeing only increased. It became clear that there was something wrong. This was his only symptom, so we weren’t that concerned, especially since he had just been to the vet for his annual in July and there were no red flags in his bloodwork or anything else they tested.
I took him to his regular veterinarian who did an exam and bloodwork, ruling out a handful of things it could be. Our vet said she thought it was probably inflammatory bowel disease and would need to get an abdominal ultrasound to confirm.
We took him to a specialist for the ultrasound, who said all of his organs were perfectly healthy, ruling out inflammatory bowel disease. They mentioned that the lymph nodes in his neck were slightly enlarged, but that it was probably nothing. The technical language on his results was mild submandibular lymphadenopathy
We took him back to our regular vet who, after feeling his neck, told us we should get a fine needle aspirate of the lymph nodes to check for cancer.
We received the news on Christmas day that he had large cell lymphoma, a very aggressive form of cancer. They said he’d have about 50 days left to live if we didn’t treat the cancer. I took the photo below on Christmas Eve.
As you may imagine this was a complete shock. He was perfectly healthy and normal aside from the increased thirst and urination–cancer wasn’t even on the initial list of possibilities.
It was expensive just to find out he had cancer, a cost breakdown of what we paid (this doesn’t include medications):
11/24/25
Exam/Health Concern: $98.00
Canine Diagnostic Panel 2 (37639999) Chem 27, SDMA, CBC, TT4 & UA + FT4ED, cPL: $365.78
Cystocentesis/Urine Collection: $51.00
Total: $514.78
12/16/25
Abdominal Ultrasound total cost: $650
12/22/25
Fine needle aspirate: $400
Note: DO NOT buy medicines directly from your veterinarian. It is always around double the cost as getting them elsewhere (we use Chewy).
We called every dog cancer specialist in the greater Seattle area and were able to get an appointment a couple weeks later. I’ll detail our chemo experience in a later post.
I’m sharing all of this information as a warning to others, that something as minimal as drinking too much water can end up being something really serious. Don’t wait to take your dog to the vet.
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