When the tired-looking woman at the animal emergency clinic shuffled into the holding room wearing an apron spattered startlingly with blood  she told me I had a choice I could submit my dear  doddery 14-year-old Staffy to some major surgery to determine whether the painful spots in her beautiful belly – causing her now sleepless nights and great  whimpering distress – were in fact a cancerous cluster  killing her slowly from the inside