Pete the Vet: I witnessed the death of a Golden Retriever with a malignant tumour

Do animals really need their spleen?

Pete the Vet: In January, I witnessed the death of a Golden Retriever with a malignant splenic tumour.

The spleen is a mysterious part of the anatomy to most people. We all have a spleen, animals and humans alike, but it isn’t something that we think about much. And, indeed, it can safely be ignored unless something goes wrong with it: it doesn’t play an obvious role in our day-to-day lives. In dogs and cats, the main reason to worry about the spleen is that it’s a common location for tumours to develop, especially in older pets.

In a healthy animal, the spleen has a number of important housekeeping functions, mostly involving blood cells. As well as storing up to 20% of the body’s red blood cells at any given time, the spleen produces various types of blood cells (both red and white), removes and processes ageing red blood cells, and it plays an important role in the immune system, helping to deal with antigens. However. it’s one of those organs that animals seem to be able to manage without (so it doesn’t create a big crisis if it’s removed for any reason).