You might call Lilly a lemon. At least, her owners joke she is.

“We were four days away from our first dog show when Lilly got sick,” said Barb Mason, owner of Lilly, a 9-year-old Great Pyrenees. “We started calling her our lemon puppy.”

Today, the remarkable eight-year cancer survivor is making lemonade out of lemons.

Lilly was only 14 months old in 2009 when she first came to Colorado State University’s James L. Voss Veterinary Teaching Hospital with lung issues.

The puppy had been coughing and hacking for two days when CSU veterinarians discovered she had chylothorax, a lung condition caused by abnormal fluid accumulation in the chest cavity.

Veterinarians immediately performed surgery on Lilly, removing one lung lobe.

Only weeks after surgery, Lilly began limping.

“I initially thought she might have pulled something,” said Mason, who drove Lilly back to CSU’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital from her home in Cheyenne, Wyo.

Days later, Mason was told Lilly had an aggressive bone tumor.

“I was standing at one of my horse’s stalls when I got the call,” she recalled. “(Doctors) told me Lilly had osteosarcoma.” …Click here to read full story

Source: Colorado State University