On Friday, a 6-year-old Weimaraner will become the third dog to receive a bone marrow transplant at the NCSU College of Veterinary Medicine, currently the only facility in the world offering the procedure.

His owners, Howie and Marna Altman of Connecticut, first found out something was wrong this fall after discovering a suspicious lump on Maverick's head.

"He had a mast cell on his head and there's a pretty severe scar here you can see that was removed at the end of October," said Howie Altman. "When he went back two weeks later to get his stitches removed, we found that another mast cell popped up on his underbelly."

That prompted their veterinarian to recommend a full body scan, which revealed lymphoma. But tests on the dog's bone marrow showed leukemia. Neither has a good prognosis. After more testing, doctors were still baffled, but decided it was likely acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a disease that is 100 percent fatal, even with chemotherapy.

"His disease usually has a prognosis of a couple of days to a few months to live," said Altman.

Altman found out that a bone marrow transplant might be an option for Maverick.  It has been done for almost 10 years in a private practice, but NCSU's program is the only one in operation now. He wasted no time in getting Maverick on the list for treatment. 

The bone marrow transplant will be done using stem cells harvested from Maverick's own blood. In preparation, the dog has been on a chemotherapy regimen that has put him in clinical remission. According to Altman, that means Maverick's blood is cancer-free, for now, paving the way for a procedure Thursday to harvest the stem cells.

Dr. Steven Suter, assistant professor of oncology at NCSU's Vet School, will use equipment donated from the Mayo Clinic during the harvesting procedure. Suter said all current human transplant protocols were originally worked out in dogs nearly 30 years ago.

"Now the time has come that we can start giving back to dogs this technology," he said.

If the stem cells are cancer-free, Maverick will undergo high-dose radiation on Friday before the healthy stem cells are re-introduced to his body. The cure rate is about 30 percent.

Even in an academic setting, the price tag for a canine bone marrow transplant is high. The Altmans can expect to pay around $15,000.

"It was never a second thought," Altman said. "That's one of the things you do, I guess, when you get a dog or have a child. You're committed to them."

 Keep up with Maverick's progress at his website.