We Are The Cure Blog | Canine Cancer Information

1.) Cancer is the cause of nearly half the deaths of older dogs (10 years and up), according to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA).

2.) Early detection is vital. You should routinely examine your dog for any physical or behavioral abnormalities and bring your dog in for regular veterinary exams. Things to look out for include: abnormal swellings, lumps under armpits and under the jaw, sores that won’t heal, foul breath, weight loss/poor appetite/difficulty eating, difficulty breathing, or bleeding/unusual discharge from any orifice on your dog’s body.

3.) Mast cell tumors are one of the most common cancers found on and under the skin of dogs. Any breed or mixed breed can get them, but Golden Retrievers, Labrador Retrievers, Boxers, Boston Terriers, Pugs, and Shar Peis have shown an increased propensity for them, according to the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM). Between 10 and 15 percent of dogs with a mast cell tumor end up getting more of them throughout their lifetime, the ACVIM reveals.

4.) Not all skin growths and masses on your dog are cancerous. Just like with humans, some tumors are benign (harmless), while others are malignant (harmful). Veterinarians confirm tumors in dogs through x-rays, blood tests and ultrasounds, and diagnose benign or malignant tumors through a biopsy, where a tissue sample is taken from the dog and examined under a microscope.

5.) Spaying and neutering reduces your dog’s risk of certain cancers. This is particularly true of uterine and breast/mammary cancer in females, and testicular cancer in males (if neutered before six months). This is important because breast cancer in dogs is fatal in about 50 percent of cases, according to the ASPCA. And let’s not forget, spaying and neutering helps control the pet population, as well.

6.) Chemotherapy isn’t just for humans. That’s right—this treatment you’ve heard about for human cancer patients is also used to put canine cancer into remission. Chemotherapy can extend the life of a dog with cancer, even canine lymphoma, and in some cases, even pose a cure. Chemotherapy damages rapidly growing cancer cells in dogs, slowing or stopping their growth entirely. The bad news is chemo can produce some rough side effects in your dog, like vomiting and nausea; however, the good news is dogs rarely lose their hair from the treatment like humans do, the ACVIM says.

7.) Cancer treatment for dogs is expensive. This is especially true of advanced treatments. You may want to consider getting a pet insurance policy when you decide to own a dog, especially if you have a high-risk breed. A pet insurance policy can give you peace of mind that you won’t go broke when obtaining the best cancer care for your dog.

This guest post is contributed by Alvina Lopez, who writes on the topics of accredited online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez@gmail.com.

Can you believe there is finally a drug for the treatment of cancer in dogs? Yes, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved the first drug made specifically to treat mast cell tumors in dogs.

Until recently human oncology medicines were used to treat cancer in dogs.

This is indeed a huge breakthrough. The new drug called Palladia, has been manufactured by Pfizer Animal Health Inc.

It works by killing tumor cells and disrupting blood supply to the tumor. However, the side effects may include diarrhea, loss of appetite, lameness, weight loss and blood in the feces.

For more information on mast cell tumors you can log on to http://www.wearethecure.org/mast-cell-tumors.

It’s an art, communicating in 140 characters.  We’ve all been there, where you type out your tweet, getting the message across just right and it ends up being over the 140 character limit!   Now there’s a choice to be made in the editing, stay true to proper grade school grammar or go with Twitter slang.  It’s so tempting to  change the “for” to 4, “to” to 2.  And let’s not forget “our” to R.

Finally after a few minutes we have managed to fit the tweet into the 140 character limit and the message is complete and understood.  All that work just to get a simple tweet out.  Was it worth it?

Well, what if we made it worth it?

Have you ever dreamed of quitting your job via Twitter?  How about popping the question within 140 characters?  Just how creative have you gotten with your Tweets?  What if, instead of just getting your message across you were able to Tweet for a good cause AND win a MacBook Pro?

The National Canine Cancer Foundation has made that possible!  The NCCF has created a Tweet writing contest to challenge you to “Write the Perfect Tweet” while giving you a chance to win a prize.

The contest has several categories to challenge you to “Write the Perfect Tweet” in relationship to the subject. You pick the category you want to write and then submit it for a chance to win some great prizes and help fund canine Cancer research.

The categories are:

1. Write the Perfect Tweet for quitting your job.
2. Write the Perfect Tweet for raising money for canine Cancer.
3. Write the Perfect Tweet for a marriage proposal.
4. Write the Perfect Tweet for telling your kids there is no Santa.

You can enter as many “Perfect Tweets” as you want. The cost to enter a tweet in the contest is $5.00 for each time you submit a new tweet. The $5.00 goes to the National Canine Cancer Foundation to fund canine Cancer research. Many of the contest partners have also created a way to enter for free also!

Get creative and go to www.perfecttweet.com!

The National Canine Cancer Foundation is a nationwide, contribution funded, non-profit corporation dedicated to eliminating Cancer as a major health problem in dogs by funding grants for the scientific efforts of Cancer researchers who are working to save lives, find a cure, find better treatments, find more accurate, cost effective, diagnostic methods in dealing with Cancer, and diminishing dogs’ suffering from Cancer through research, education, advocacy, and service.  Find out more about the Foundation on www.wearethecure.org.

Guest blogging for the National Canine Cancer Foundation is a real honor – and a great way for dog lovers to share stories and information. Thanks to the National Canine Cancer Foundation, work for a cure is supported. People who have lost beloved friends or whose dogs are living with cancer have a place to go to find hope and strength. But I want more.

I want all guest bloggers here to share their posts on the National Canine Cancer Foundation’s blog across the dog-blogosphere, so we can get the word about Canine Cancer where it badly needs to go – to people whose dogs are healthy. Let’s face it; people don’t want to hear about cancer if it’s not in their lives. It’s too frightening. But, if we are able to spread information that can help people take real action to promote wellness in their dogs, we can make the National Canine Cancer Foundation’s job a little bit easier.

I started thinking about canine cancer as my dogs got older, (they’ll be 7 and 9 this year) and as I heard about so many pets, both dogs and cats, who were dying from cancer. On one street not far from where I live, the cancer rate for both people and pets seems extraordinarily high. Is it because the planes landing at the airport empty their gas tanks over that area? (The tops of trees in the arboretum there are surely showing signs of damage.) Is the cancer rate due to poor diet? Heredity? Lawn chemicals? Coincidence? More frightening is the possibility that this street is not an anomaly.

When it comes to animal companions, pet owners turn to the experts for help. After all, everyone wants to be sure they’re doing the best they can to keep their pets healthy. What, then, has gone so terribly wrong? Well, sometimes, people choose the wrong experts to listen to, for instance, unscrupulous advertising agencies, who push foods that aren’t really very nutritious for animals, or more subversively, splash images of happy dogs in their ads and on the trucks of lawn care services, who use toxic chemicals.

People need to realize that they are capable of becoming the experts themselves, and more than that, they need to become the experts themselves to effectively advocate for the health and well being of their animal companions. To do this, they must read everything they can get their hands on and question, question, question – Is this food, vaccine, medication, procedure, training protocol, you fill in the blank, what’s right and healthy for my dog?- even if it means an uncomfortable conversation with the vet.

Many pet owners are not aware, for instance, of the danger vaccines pose to pets, including their contribution to incidences of immune disorders, elevated liver enzymes, kidney failure, seizures, hypothyroidism, and cancer, among others. Dr. Jean Dodds, an internationally recognized authority on thyroid issues in dogs and blood diseases in animals, has done extensive research on vaccines, and asserts “In veterinary medicine, evidence implicating vaccines in triggering immune-mediated and other chronic disorders (vaccinosis) is compelling.” She is currently working toward reducing the number of rabies vaccines dogs receive by extending the vaccination requirements to five, and then seven years.

In short, pet lovers need to read the about vaccination issues so that they can make an educated decision about which vaccines and how many their pet really needs, (within legal guidelines, of course) no matter what that postcard from the vet says.

People also need to be open to new ideas and to pay attention to evidence amassed from years of research when it comes to the health of their pets – especially when the results challenge their belief systems about medical care. People often fall into the mindset of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” In the case of canine cancer, however, something in the healthcare system for animals is terribly broken, and both pet owners and the medical community need to look beyond what they’re doing now into new options with an emphasis on wellness, rather than fearing change, in order to remedy the situation.

Dr. Terry Shirvani, a Naturopathic physician and owner of cats, suggests that we can (and should!) take for the most part, concepts of holistic health for humans, which are based on wellness, and extend them to our animal friends. The holistic approach takes into account the health of the whole being, and as Terry emphasizes, animals are beings, just as much as humans are. Holism looks at each animal as an individual.

Just like people, all animals are unique in their health and emotional requirements. There is no one-size-fits-all food for dogs, and providing them with the best food we can may mean preparing their meals by hand, rather than picking up a bag of kibble at the supermarket. Sound ridiculous? Consider then, the health and lifespan of dogs before the introduction of kibble. Terry also points out how stress in owners’ lives can affect their pets who are extremely sensitive to what’s going on with their human guardians. By looking at ways to improve pets’ quality of life, their owners may be surprised to find ways in which it’s critical to improve their own.

The path to wellness is not difficult. The difficulty lies in people’s resistance to change. Looking up information on the Internet is not hard. Changing dog food is not hard. Vaccinating less is not hard (and saves money!) Trying a more natural approach to wellness instead of patching symptoms may require finding a different vet, but that’s not really so hard, either. Small changes can make a world of difference. Let’s make that world one that’s canine cancer free.

Contributed by Beth Lowell, Animal Reiki Practitioner, www.bethlowell.com

One word is wrong in the title of this post.

Can you find it?

It is the word “should”.

There is no “should”.

There is no “right” way to feel.

There is no “right” way to act.

What is, is.

What you feel, is what you feel.

There is no more than that.

There is no judgment to your reaction.

If you cry, yell, are silent, laugh, focus on your work, get mad, turn towards friends, turn away, that is just the nature of what is. We all react differently and there is no “one” way. Just let it all be.

Be who you are. Be how you are. Do not allow it to mean anything about yourself. No judgment that you are good, that you are bad, you should feel this, you shouldn’t feel that.

Contributed by Alex in Welderland at www.custompeturns.com Twitter is @CustomPetUrns

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

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

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Depending on what statistics you read, there are anywhere from 25 to 45 million dogs owners in the US.  Many people have more than one dog which is why those same statistics say there are anywhere from 45 to 65 million dogs in the US.

Being part of a non profit organization that funds canine Cancer research, stats like that get me both excited and frustrated.  I wish I could cosmically speak into every one of these dog owners and tell them to send $10 per year to help fund canine Cancer research.  With 25 to 45 million dog owners that would be $250 to $450 million dollars toward canine Cancer research each year.

If we received funds like that we would have a cure for canine Cancer.  Now, before you say that it would be better used to fund human Cancer research, let me share a few things with you. (more…)