Well we've been to the vets and Monty is now booked in for a biopsy next Wednesday.

The vet was really nice but yet another that we hadn't seen before but he was a lot older than the usual ones we see and seemed to explain things better so i had more confidence in him!

Anyway the vet said that we should consider how much it's raised in a year and consider that it could continue to do this each year and cause him problems later in life in the sense that if it gets bigger he could knock it and damage it more etc etc.

He said he doesn't think it's tumour of any sort as he's had it from birth and they're generally not born with tumours.

He advised doing the biopsy which will test for lots of different things but will also give an indication of whether it could grow more or whether it will stay as it is.

He said his gut instinct would be to remove it now whilst he's still young but in doing so they'd have to send him to a specialist to effectively reconstruct his head as there would be an open hole left and they'd have to move other skin to fill it in like a graft I guess. I'm not entirely sure i want to go down this road and will only do this if it HAS to be removed.

He reckoned that if he'd had it removed when he was younger it would've been a lot easier so now i feel p*****d off that in all the times we've been to the vets none of the other vets have ever shown any concern about it which also leaves me feeling confused as to why one vet thinks it should be removed but several others have never made any comment.

I explained to him that I only want the best for Monty and that I don't want to put him through anything unnecessary which he said was understandable.

So now he's booked in for the biopsy under sedation which the vet mentioned about a million times that "it isn't free of risks" which really helped ease my nerves. I've never left him at the vets before so it's a new experience for me and for Monty. He hates being enclosed in small spaces so don't know how he'll cope with being shut in a cage - probably my fault for never using a crate with him.

I know the biopsy is the best thing to do at this stage but I can't help feeling worried about it and that we should've done something sooner.

Sorry for the long post and the rambling, i'm just generally a bit stressed with several situations at the moment.

Thanks to everyone who's shown interest in this thread and Monty.

hello,
think this is sensible course of action, just to say as well that Bruno had a biopdy under sedation and had no problems other than being dopey and shaky when I collected him, however I was called to collect him early as he was making such a fuss in the cage, and stressing the other dogs.

So I am sure your vets wouldnt let Monty get stressed and would call you to collect him if he wasnt behaving well. Its worse for them if they are a nightmare so they wont leave him to stress. so dont you stress too much !!!

hope all goes ok