Even with some of the fanciest technology around -- and an owner who loved him enough to pay for it -- the veterinarians thought Clyde, a burly, loose-jointed Labrador retriever, would be long dead by now.
If the cancer had gotten him, Gloria Mitchell might be dead, too.
Mitchell was asleep in the Cumberland County, N.C., house she shared with Clyde's owner, Peter Maynard, when the hefty canine jumped onto the bed and began pushing her with his nose. Maynard had gone to the beach, and Mitchell had been home sick a couple of days and didn't feel like getting up.
Clyde ignored her protests and wouldn't let her go back to sleep. He nearly shoved her out of bed.
When she finally got up, she realized groggily that she was disoriented and weary not only from illness but also from smoke.
There was an electrical fire under the house, and it was filling quickly with smoke.
"The firemen said it was a good thing he got me up," said Mitchell, a postmaster, recalling the late October fire.
Now it's Clyde whose life is in jeopardy. Again.
He sneezed blood, recalling memories of his near death two years ago.
In late 2006, he began having disturbing episodes, sneezing blood -- lots of it. And he was sneezing so hard he whacked his head on the floor. Veterinarians in Massachusetts, where Maynard lived then, couldn't figure out what was wrong. Maynard stayed home for days, holding Clyde on the couch to keep him comfortable. He refused to leave his dog's side even to get food, so relatives brought him meals.
Then Maynard moved to North Carolina, and he immediately took Clyde to N.C. State's College of Veterinary Medicine, where the vets found a tumor in his nose that was rapidly eating away bone and moving toward his brain. The dog would probably live only a few months, even with radiation therapy, doctors told Maynard. But if Maynard was willing to pay for the treatment, it could at least improve Clyde's quality of life.
People have always found Clyde to be a little different, Maynard said. The dog often seems to be listening intently to conversations and somehow seems to understand an unusual amount of what he hears.
"My friends say he's not a dog, that he's really a person in a dog suit," Maynard said.
And somehow, Clyde lived on.
"My friends were wondering why he lasted so long," Maynard said. "I guess we found out."
Two weeks after saving Mitchell from the fire, Clyde started sneezing again. Maynard saw the blood, and his heart fell.
"I said, 'My God, this just can't be happening,' " Maynard said.
Maynard had been told that the radiation treatments were so powerful it probably wouldn't be possible to do another round. It turned out that Clyde had lived long enough and recovered well enough to handle more.
This week Maynard drove to Raleigh to get Clyde, who just finished radiation therapy. Dr. Jerome Benoit, a radiation oncology resident who has been treating Clyde, led him to the waiting room on a leash.
The hair on Clyde's face, which now grows in a white patch as a result of the first radiation treatment, was crosshatched with green lines that the veterinarians had drawn to help them precisely target the tumor.
As the two men chatted about drug dosage and the next round of radiation, Clyde plopped on the floor, ignoring the crowd of people and dogs -- his usual calm self.
Then he sneezed, soft and sloppy. But no blood.
Maynard said he has spent about $10,000 on Clyde's care.
"I guess a lot of people would say that it's crazy," he said. "But anything I've spent on him is worth every penny."
Gloria Mitchell is the first to agree.
E-mail Jay Price at jay.price(at)newsobserver.com.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
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