The Dog Cancer Survival Guide (16 page)

Sunny passed away a year after Sarah shared this, and sixteen months later than the statistics predicted – and when it happened, the whole family contributed to her hospice care as outlined in
Chapter 25
. Sarah reported that it was a terribly sad, but very loving and moving time for everyone.

“By re-establishing our daily walks we are all feeling healthier. The walks also keep us happier and we play more than we used to. I am ashamed to say I became really lazy in the past few months. I am also not as depressed about the cancer situation since we are all more active and I believe that Buddy and Jack both “pick up” on my mood change.”

– Debbie Granger, Chesterfield, Missouri

“One of the first things I did was to try the emotional management exercises, and I found that they gave me a sense of peace, knowing that everything I would be doing would be in Sparkle’s best interest.”

– Susan McKay, Winnipeg, Manitoba

“I do the Pledge of Thanks just about every day (even with my older dog who does not have cancer). I feel that our dogs are “gifts” to us in life, and we need to thank them (every day) for being with us.”

- Sheril Allen, Austin, Texas

I don’t expect you to adopt Sarah’s point of view immediately or even at all. I just wanted to show you another possibility. Knowing that some people come out of this experience stronger could give you hope on a dark day.

At first, the exercises in this chapter might feel like that oxygen mask on the plane – necessary to help you, so you can help your dog. Perhaps they could also be used as amplifying devices to make your average moods good and your good moods even better. Every uptick in your emotional mood will help you, and help your dog.

T
here are three questions guardians tend to ask first when they get a cancer diagnosis. Because these three questions seem to weigh on the mind and could distract you from learning anything new, I am going to answer them as best I can.

How could my dog get cancer almost overnight?

Why didn’t my vet catch this earlier?

Is my dog dying right now?

One of the hardest things for most guardians to grasp is how they didn’t see this coming. Many times the dog seems healthy right before she’s brought in for an evaluation. Sometimes dogs don’t seem sick at all.

How did this grave illness escape your attention? The answer may surprise you: your dog may have hidden it from you.

Dogs have an old, genetic program that encourages them to conceal any sign of illness, a legacy from when they ran in packs. The pack mentality oriented them toward maintaining their position in the hierarchy and defending the pack from predators. Weak dogs slow down the pack and become predators’ targets. As a result, they risk losing their rank in the hierarchy or being left behind, which is a terrible fate for a dog. A dog will do just about anything to avoid this – including behaving as if nothing is wrong for as long as she can.

Despite generations of domestication, dogs still think like wild animals when they feel ill. If your dog felt sick before his diagnosis, you can bet he did everything he could to make you think he was just fine.

When a dog can no longer hide his symptoms, he gives up trying and seems to get sick over-night. This is called
decompensation
, and it often occurs just before the guardian takes the dog to the vet. This leads me to the second reason that cancer seems to sneak up on us: our reliance upon sight.

Humans use sight as their primary information-gathering sense. We see our dog eating, walking, playing, sleeping, going to the bathroom, and wagging her tail when we come home. Over time, we use this visual information to create a picture in our mind of what is normal for our dog. As long as we see all of these things happening, we assume that nothing is off-kilter.

Dogs, on the other hand, use their sense of smell as their primary means of gathering information. When they sniff each other (a habit we often find funny or gross) they are actually gathering information. Is she in heat? Is he healthy? What did she eat for breakfast? All these questions and many more can be answered by decoding a dog’s scent.

Our puny human noses cannot smell our dog’s illness.

Because of our dog’s ability to compensate for their symptoms, our eyes are blind, too. Given all of this, we cannot possibly blame ourselves for not discovering cancer before decompensation occurred.

“Wait a minute!” some guardians are thinking, “I suppose I can understand why I didn’t catch this earlier, but what about my vet? Shouldn’t he have seen this coming?”

Cancer is an epidemic, but the veterinary community is not treating it as one. Dr. Ettinger and I both feel that this must change, and soon.

Vets can advocate for dogs by informing clients of the risks for cancer when they find a lump. Every lump must be checked for cancer as soon as it’s found, using simple and minimally invasive fine needle aspirates and lab tests.

In addition, using simple im-aging tests such as X-rays and ultra-sounds during routine exams could make catching cancer earlier possible, just like mammograms do for human breast cancer.

Of course, there is a lot of debate amongst vets and oncologists about how much screening is too much. As we recently saw in human cancer, there can be costs associated with screening for cancer that outweigh the benefits.

You may remember when a task force analyzed the data on mam-mograms and human breast cancer and suggested that the guidelines be changed: instead of getting a yearly mammogram after the age of forty, women would get one only when their doctor felt they were at risk for breast cancer – otherwise, they could wait until fifty to get their first mammogram, and then get one every two years thereafter.

The proposed guideline change was to save the majority of women (85%) who do not get breast cancer in their forties from the discomfort of the test itself, the cost of the test, and the emotional toil of waiting for the results, false positives and unnecessary biopsies.

I don’t want to advocate for unnecessary screening and I certainly don’t want dog lovers to start feeling paranoid about their dogs’ every little problem. We do not know how often to do screenings – a chest X-ray every year? Every two years? Only after age five? Six? Seven? How much cancer would this early screening actually catch?

There are a lot of questions that need to be answered.

And still, the problem remains: cancer is epidemic, and we’re not taking action. Routine exams are not happening often enough. Fine needle aspirates – simple, non-invasive, and relatively inexpensive – and biopsies are not being used often enough. These tests are worth it. And Dr. Ettinger even recommends adding chest X-rays and abdominal ultra-sounds to routine physical exams for middle aged and older dogs.

Realizing that cancer is here, and it’s a big problem, we must open our minds to cancer treatments that come from other places, disciplines and therapies. Adding tools to our toolbox is imperative.