We Are The Cure Blog | Canine Cancer Information

Our pets are among the most joyful things in our lives. They are family, they are friendship, they are unconditional love. We cherish them and spoil them and look forward to their heartfelt welcomes every time we see them. The last thing that we want to think about is when they will no longer be there to greet us, lick our faces, nuzzle their noses up against us.

After five years of talking to grieving pet owners every day, one of the most common things that I hear from people is “I wish that I would have prepared for this.” Just as devastating as losing any other family member, losing a pet can be paralyzing. I think this reference to “preparing” is both preparing emotionally, and logistically, i.e., what do you want to do with the body? One dear client of mine took a leave of absence from work and spent the last year of her dog’s life at home with her, not wanting to miss a moment of her last days. But never did she think of preparing for what she would do with her loved one’s (Coco) remains after she passed. Once Coco was gone, she realized that she didn’t believe in cremation and wanted to bury her dear pup but had no idea what kind of box or container to bury her in. She was so distraught over the loss that she couldn’t think clearly at all and wished that she had made all of these decisions before the dreaded time came – when she was able to think clearly.

While it is difficult, not fun and absolutely dreadful to think about, preparing for the loss of your animal companion(s) can prove to be the best thing that you ever do for yourself. You’ll thank yourself later because all of these difficult decisions will already be made and the logistics and motions that you have to go through will be just that – logistics and motions. You won’t be bogged down in a lot of difficult decisions that are made so much harder by your broken heart.

Decisions to give some thought to now:

1. Cremation or burial? This is a VERY personal choice. Do you believe in cremation? It’s a good question to make a decision about ahead of time.

2. If burial is the right choice for you, choose a pet cemetery now, find out the pricing and availability of plots.

3. What type of grave marker do you want to use

4. Do you want to have a ceremony? Large or small? Indoors or out?

5. Do you want to put anything else in the grave with your pet, i.e., toys, photos, pillow, blanket, a memento of yourself, etc?

On a bit of a lighter note you might want to consider making a list of all of the fun and indulgent things that you’re going to do with your furry friend in his or her last days. Now this is only useful if your pet is sick and you know the end is coming. Unfortunately, our friends sometimes suffer unexpected accidents that we don’t see coming, but if you know the end is near, spoil your pet rotten in their last days with you. Let them sleep on furniture they’re not supposed to, let them indulge in their treats (if it won’t harm them or cause them to be uncomfortable), take them for lots of car rides if they love that, take lots of walks and play all of those silly games that make them so happy.

Make every day meaningful for both you and your pet. Unfortunately they’re not with us forever, so we need to savor all of the love and friendship that they give us so generously.

Colleen Mihelich is the Founder of Peternity.com, a website dedicated to supporting the grieving pet owner. She is an expert author on the subject of Pet Loss. You can find her on her blog, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Post a free memorial to your pet on Peternity.com

Did you ever think of adopting a senior dog as a form of recycling? It sure is, and it can help everyone involved!  If you bring a senior dog into your life through adoption, you help shelters by cutting down on the senior dog population that will, in many cases, be euthanized more quickly than younger dogs or puppies..  You help a senior dog get a new lease on life.  Best of all, you get a loving and grateful companion.

So why do so many people pick puppies? Puppies are cute, no matter what breed or size or color, and in most cases they get adopted quickly and easily.  Puppies are cute for a reason, so we put up with their antics and lack of brains until they become complete dogs.  Why not get the full package immediately?

Often, people are afraid to adopt an older dog because of the cost.  People assume that an older dog will automatically have health problems that will have to be dealt with by a vet and that means money out of pocket.  In reality, when you adopt a young puppy, you are putting money out for him or her as well.  There are shots, shots again, spaying and neutering, and yearly checkups.  Let’s not forget the ruined shoes, gallons of pet stain remover, and new furniture.

Another deterrent in adopting a senior dog is the dog’s history.  The fear of the unknown, it could be called.  No one wants to find out that the dog they adopted endured physical or mental abuse and now snaps at and cowers from tall men or women with glasses, or who knows what.   Granted, dogs can’t tell you what their stories are, but nothing is insurmountable.  Patience, training, and plain old-fashioned love can take care of lots of issues with dogs.  Plus, no one can assure you of your new puppy’s future either…unfortunately.

There are major benefits to adopting older dogs.

Older dogs tend to have calmer temperaments than their younger counterparts. Let’s face it, puppies are like kids….they have boundless amount of energy and go from 0 to 100 in mere seconds.  If you aren’t up to the challenge of a young dog, then an older dog is definitely for you!  While older dogs still need exercise, they love a long nap and a good chin scratch.

With an older dog, what you see is what you get. There are occasions when puppies grow up to look nothing like what anyone thought they were supposed to look like.  A puppy that looks like it’s going to stay small may grow up to be over 100 pounds! With a senior dog, you already know what you’ve got.

Many older dogs have already lived in a house environment and are housebroken. What a bonus…no housebreaking!  That also means no chewed up shoes, furniture or other important things.  Older dogs are long past the teething stage.

Senior dogs will let you get a good night’s sleep. Older dogs settle into a routine easily, and that includes bathroom visits and bedtimes.  They are accustomed to human schedules and don’t need feeding, comforting, or potty breaks at 2 a.m.  Their bladders are bigger too!

Older dogs listen better (hopefully) and mind better. Older dogs are more mellow and learn more easily.  If they’ve had any kind of human interaction, that means they have had some training, whether it be on purpose or even by accident.  Older dogs just “get it..”

So why not give a senior dog a great home for the twilight years of his life?  You will reap much more than you sow in love, gratitude and better health than you can imagine.  Your time with your senior dog may be shorter than with a puppy, but in many instances you have given an older dog a second chance at a loving, happy family and home.  Adopting a senior dog truly is the purest form of recycling!

“Old dogs, like old shoes, are comfortable – they may be a bit out of shape and worn around the edges, but they fit so well.” –Bonnie Wilcox, “Old Dogs, Old Friends”

Thanks to Roberta Beach, Silverwalk Hounds Dog Sanctuary, for her help with this article.  www.silverwalk.petfinder.com

submitted by Stacy L. Busch
www.buschpetproducts.com

According to Dr. Michael W. Fox’s 2007 book, Dog Body, Dog Mind, dogs and other animals posses a sensitivity to electromagnetic and geomagnetic fields. This allows for an internal compass and clock that allow animals to use the sun, moon and stars to have a sense of time in relation to the position of objects in space. In addition, dogs posses iron salt deposits in their brains (as do humans!) that can act as a magnetic compass. This accounts for a dog’s ability to preform ‘psychic’ acts in relation to finding a lost companion or finding ones way home over many miles, even in unknown environments.

But, what about the many accounts of dogs who predict emotional or health related events across time and space?

Accounts are commonplace in which dogs howl or having strong physical and vocal reactions to seemingly nothing, only for human companions to later find out that at the very moment their pet dog was howling at ‘nothing’, that a beloved family member in a distant place had passed on or sustained a serious injury.

Dr. Fox explains this psychic phenomenon by invoking Albert Einstein’s theory of a unified field, in which all things are interconnected and interdependant. Einstein failed to express this theory mathematically, however, Fox argues that the existence of this field is demonstrated by modern sciences such as ecology and quantum mechanics (Fox, 91).

Fox continues to assert that this interconnectedness, as often described in spiritual doctrines, connects every living being to one another as we are all psychophysically connected to the bodies in space and everything that ‘is’ via our senses and emotions. Given that we are emotional beings, it would be natural to assume that a companion animal forms a connection to his pack members (human and animal) and that connection can form a point in the space-time continuum, allowing him to re-orient himself toward the emotional field of his family (Fox, 91).

Fox refers to this phenomenon as the ‘empathosphere,’ to which the animal kingdom is still connected but we humans have been removed in the plight of Western, industrialized, contemporary life. The empathosphere is based on the notion that when animals feel an emotional connection, they can use the unified field of interconnectivity to “‘feel-see’ across time and space and sometimes sense another’s activities and emotional state,” (Fox, 92).

This was a guest blog written by Hilary Sloan Canine Aficionado www.caninebark.com

It has been recorded that dogs can sense when an earthquake or tsunami is coming. Heightened sensitivity to changes in barometric pressure, tremors and other animals may allow them to ‘predict’ a future event, offering a scientific explanation for this particular type of event.

But what about those dogs that save lives? Service dogs are utilized for their ability to predict epileptic seizures or low blood sugar in diabetics, alerting their companion in advance to avert an potentially life threatening episode. It’s not just service dogs who preform these phenomenal acts; accounts of dogs with no training alerting their companions before life threatening attacks are common. How is this possible?

There have been accounts of dogs predicting heart attacks and perhaps most interestingly, cancers. Perhaps the explanation for this behavior lies in our canine companion’s acute sensitivity to changes in odors or changes in behavior that are missed by humans. Rather then being ‘psychic,’ perhaps in addition to science, our dogs are so in tune with that from which we are blocked, they truly can assist us in connecting to that which we are removed from, due to the convoluted structures of modern life.

New studies do conclude that dogs can ’sniff’ out cancer. A major study on this topic was conducted by the Pine Street Foundation, a research organization in San Anselmo, California and more studies utilizing canines to detect cancer are underway.

As dogs can have the ability to smell chemical traces in the range of parts per trillion, dogs are able to discern the breath of lung and breast cancer patients from that of healthy people. Cancer cells emit different metabolic waste from normal cells and these particles can be detected by dogs, even in very early stages of the disease. Previous studies have confirmed the ability of trained dogs to detect skin-cancer melanomas by sniffing skin lesions. It is hoped that dogs will also be able to detect prostate and other cancers by sniffing urine samples. Early detection is vital to a good prognosis for cancer patients and it may be the super-sniffers of dogs that are able to detect disease before any human-made screening methods.

Accounts of untrained house pets repeatedly sniffing or pawing at an area on a family members body are common, only for the human to later find out they have a cancer in the very region that the dog was so focused on. Clearly, the science behind the dog’s abilities are tapping into the natural capabilities of the dog.

This was a guest blog written by Hilary Sloan Canine Aficionado www.caninebark.com

All of us who have pets know the wonderful joy that they bring to our lives.  In our case, being greeted by our three loving Golden Retrievers when we come home each day wipes away every worry or stress we had.  Even if we go out to the store for an hour, upon our return we are greeted as though we had been gone for a week.

I often say to myself why can’t I be like that.  Yes I’m generally a friendly person but if my wife goes out for a short trip to the store, when she comes home is my response a simple “Hi need help with the groceries”  or do I greet her, with the same happiness, sans the tail, that our dogs show.

Come to think of it, if I did greet her every time she came home like our Golden’s do, she would have me carted off to the nearest psychologist but there is a happy medium.

I can learn alot about how to treat my wife, friends and family from our pets. They teach us loyalty, how to explore, how to forgive. That is an amazing one.  And when they find something to play with they can show us how to be silly throwing caution to the wind.

Trust me I have learned that occasionally being silly is a good thing. One day I may even attempt the tried and true dog method of running around the backyard real fast several times and then rolling around in the grass for several minutes.  It’s fun to watch so I bet it has to be fun to do.  I will get back to you on that one.

There are so many other things I can say about our beloved pets and how they teach us about life but instead I would like you the readers to do that. Please share with us, in the comment section below, what you have learned about life from your pets.

Here are some important things to keep in mind while traveling with your pet:

• Make sure your pet is properly identified. Obtain identification with the address of your destination, as well. You don’t want your pet end up in Florida when you’re heading to Texas!
• Whether you’re traveling by plane, train, or automobile, teach your pet to travel in his/her kennel. This training will make the entire traveling experience less stressful to the animal (and you), whether your traveling across the country or across town.
• Make sure your kennel is the proper size for your animal. It should be large enough for your pet to stand and turn around in comfortably (especially for long trips).
• Never leave your pet unattended in your vehicle or in the airport.
• If traveling by plane, book direct non-stop flights.
• Generally, puppies and kittens, sick animals, animals in heat, and frail or pregnant animals should not travel by air.
• Carry copies of vaccination records with you, as you never know when you might need them. Health certificates are generally required to fly with an animal on an airline.
• Plan well in advance and do your research. Some states have strict regulations on traveling with pets. Don’t be caught at the last minute!
• During the summer, certain cities like Phoenix, AZ will not allow dogs to fly on the planes due to hot temperatures on the planes cargo hold while at the airport

If you follow these general rules of pet travel, you and your pet should have no problem enjoying the trip. If you’re still cautious about pet travel, check out Pet Airways — a pet only airline, dedicated to a pet-friendly travel experience for your pet.

This blog was a guest blog written by Josh Weirich of Nurtured Pets www.nurturedpets.com

After reading the great blog by our guest blogger Alex of Welderland, I started to think about when we had to put our three dogs down because of Cancer.  I don’t have to tell anyone reading this how hard that decision is, especially right at the time of doing it.

But my wife and I have discovered something that happens with our dogs.  Each dog in their own way, let us know when it was time.  I can still remember when we made the decision for Bailey.  He was the hard one because even with only days left, he was still strong but he could hardly breathe because the Hermangiosarcoma had spread throughout his lungs.

When Bailey let us know it was time, it was at night.  We brush our dogs every night before going to bed and Bailey loved that.  He was up on the grooming table and struggled to breathe but was wagging his tail because he loved to be on the table and brushed.  Then there was a moment when he looked at us in a way that said he was ready, Sara and I both knew without saying anything to each other that it was time, and we just hugged him what seems forever and cried.  The next morning we said good bye to him.

Each of our dogs that have died of Cancer have told us when it is time by a look or an action that in our case makes us know we did the right thing.  But doing the right thing still is not easy and I still sometimes have doubts.  That is why I think Alexandria’s blog was so powerful.

Lymphoma in dogs is one of the most common cancers. While between 80 and 90% of dogs will achieve a complete remission, with conventional chemotherapy protocols the median time to loss of first remission is between 8 and 10 months with median overall survivals ranging between 12 and 14 months. Only about 5% of dogs will be alive at two years. The last major breakthrough for the treatment of canine lymphoma was the addition of doxorubicin to combination chemotherapy protocols around 30 years ago. New therapies to break through this ceiling are desperately needed.

We have recently begun enrolling dogs with relapsed lymphoma in a new clinical trial to evaluate a new type of chemotherapy treatment. We are evaluating response and toxicity. Working closely with the human medical school we have developed a nanoparticle targeting agent. This molecule targets dog lymphoma cells and brings conventional chemotherapy agents to the cancer cells. This has the potential of making therapy for lymphoma both more effective and less toxic.

This work is funded by a grant from the National Canine Cancer Foundation. At the conclusion of the trial we will make more information on this exciting new treatment available on the website

From Wikipedia: “Well into the 20th century, coal miners brought canaries into coal mines as an “early warning signal” for deadly, toxic gases. The birds, being more sensitive, would become sick before the miners, who would then have a chance to escape or put on protective respirators.”

Is it any wonder that with the “pre green” proliferation of chemical laden cleaning and laundry products, building supplies, and monthly flea poison treatments, that our pets are developing cancer at such an alarming rate? In addition to protecting one’s animal from constant exposure to a myriad of possible household carcinogens, our having to negotiate the constant recalls and dangers of an unregulated, processed pet food industry can be an overwhelming and depressing nightmare. But there’s also a deeper issue: when it comes to these everyday toxins that we have become so unconscious about or accepting of, have our cherished, innocent pets become our modern day canaries?

There are MANY things we can do to prevent our beloved companion animals from ever getting cancer. When my 8-year old dog, aka: my adopted daughter, Buttons, was diagnosed with deadly carcinoma and given 6 weeks to live, I launched a massive personal research campaign into the world of holistic medicine. I soon came to learn that “holistic” didn’t mean symptom treating with natural remedies or herbs in lieu of pharmaceutical drugs. Instead, it meant clearing my home environment of all possible toxins, cleansing Buttons’ entire system physically and emotionally, and then giving her the proper nutritional support so that Buttons’ body could do what an unburdened body does best: HEAL ITSELF. Buttons went on to thrive for another 11 years. Exactly 1 week before her 19th birthday, she died peacefully of old age in my loving arms.

Contributed by Nadine M. Rosin, author of The Healing Art of Pet Parenthood TheHealingArtOfPetParenthood.com