Dog Cancer Life Quality Treatments
Low Dose Chemotherapy and Cancer
Over the last few years, there has been much work in attempting to improve canine cancer treatment. One strategy has been to use lower, continuous doses of oral chemotherapy drugs. The goal in this is to lessen chemotherapy toxicity, reduce trips to the oncologist for IV injections (the medications are pills), and hopefully gaining life…
Read Article
Disruptive Stress and Dog Cancer
Coping with dog cancer is extremely stressful. Certain life events, like coping with dog cancer in your loved family member, create such stress that it actually disrupts normal thinking. This is called “disruptive stress.” This is very natural and common. However, disruptive stress has been shown to have a real negative effect. Disruptive stress creates…
Read ArticleGuardian Versus Dog Lover in Dog Cancer
There is a big difference between loving a dog and being a dog guardian. Guardianship implies being a protector. There is vigilance, resourcefulness, and problem solving mixed with love. Being a dog lover is just enjoying your relationship with your dog. Guardianship is required for dealing with canine cancer. Being a dog lover is not…
Read ArticleInnovations in Dog Cancer Care
Cancer may be the toughest adversary in medicine today. When a dog lover is faced with a dog cancer diagnosis, one of the most common questions is, “Are there any other options?” Many guardians are urgently looking for options beyond what seems to exist in conventional medical care today. For this reason, The Dog Cancer…
Read ArticleCarcinoma of the Anal Sac, part 2
In the last post, anal sac carcinoma was discussed, including diagnosing these malignant tumors in the dog. In this post, we will cover more on treatments and some data concerning outcomes. If a guardian is coping with a diagnosis of canine anal sac carcinoma, often major questions arise soon after the news is received. Chemotherapy? …
Read ArticleChubby Golden Retriever Has Less Cancer Protection
I was talking to one of my clients today in the exam room. She owns an awesome Golden Retriever named Baloo. Like his namesake in the movie “The Jungle Book,” Baloo is happy, friendly, goofy and….chubby. I started telling Baloo’s owner about the cancer rate in the breed. It is estimated that around 2/3…
Read ArticleKidney Supplements For Dog Cancer
Cancer of the kidneys can be very hard, both for you and for your dog. This is actually a rare cancer, so I hope some information here can help. Let’s look at this topic. To understand what happens with cancers of the dog kidney, it is important to understand what the kidneys normally do. Just…
Read ArticleHow Do I know The Right Course of Treatment, part 2
In the last post we looked at the information you need to gather about surgery, chemotherapy and radiation for your dog when deciding on a treatment plan. But as you know, the choices do not stop there. As a Guardian you also need to decide what to do. Since you are your dog’s primary advocate,…
Read ArticleHow Do I know The Right Course of Treatment
The decisions surrounding dog cancer treatment can be complicated. This is not only because of the treatments themselves. Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation have multiple steps. Diet and supplements are not necessarily strait forward either. Steps to change a dog’s brain chemistry to a cancer fighting state take some doing as well. Boosting life quality needs…
Read ArticleTime and the Joys of Life in Dog Cancer
We are very busy in modern life. It seems as time goes on, the faster it speeds by. Dog cancer is connected in many ways to time. There is the question that is most pressing: “How much more time do I have?”. This is an important piece of information to get, along with the odds…
Read ArticleChemosensitizers
We need longer life expectancies in dogs with cancer. When guardians hear the statistics about dog cancer survival, they are often shocked at how grim things sound. And to be honest, they are grim. For this reason, we need to start looking “outside the box” of existing conventional cancer care. This was one of the…
Read ArticleAn Overview of What Else Can I Do?
The most common question I receive is: My dog has cancer. What else can I do? Well, this is a very short question that needs a very long answer. I will do my best to give the big categories here. First, get the data you need. A real guardian needs information to make aware decisions. …
Read ArticleTo Chemo or Not To Chemo?
One of the little known facts about veterinary medicine is that chemotherapy does not cure cancer in dogs, with few exceptions (except transmissible venereal tumor or the very rare lympho or something). I believe that many people are unaware of this fact. So we are left with a treatment modality that has a goal of…
Read ArticleA Dog With Bone Cancer
I couple of months back, I diagnosed a bone tumor in a wonderful dog named Dolly. Dolly is one of the world’s happiest dogs. She is an elderly family member (she would not be happy if I told you her age). She is a Boxer. As many are aware, Boxers are one of the breeds…
Read ArticleSigns of Dog Lymph Node Cancer
Many find a bump or a lump on their canine companion at home. The first question is usually, “what is this?” Sometimes the second question is, “Is it a gland or a lymph node?” These are good questions. The reason is that glands, or lymph nodes, become swollen for different reasons. Like in people, infection…
Read Article
Breast Cancer Signs in Dogs: What to Look For and How to Think About Mammary Cancer
Finding a lump on your dog’s breast is not good: Learn how to examine your dog for breast cancer and when to head to the veterinarian.
Read ArticleA Sign of Dog Cancer to Know About
What are the signs of dog cancer? That’s a tough question. There are internal cancers and there are external cancers. With the external cancers, those that are found in the skin, the space under the skin, superficial muscles, or in bony structures that are close to the outside of the body, many times we see…
Read ArticleBut Cancer Treatment at My Dog’s Age?
So many guardians post comments on this blog, asking questions that have to do with age and cancer treatment. Let’s look at this topic today. I have an old dog. What is the right choice for cancer treatment? This central question usually can boil down to whether the life quality negative of the treatment is…
Read ArticleBetter and Longer: End of Life Care
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine was just published that showed that human cancer patients lived both longer and better with hospice care. Patients with a type of lung cancer lived almost 2 months longer with hospice care than those who did not. Similar trends have been seen with other terminal diseases…
Read ArticleDifferent Pain, Different Drugs
In some ways physicians have it easy. An MD can ask a human patient, “Are you in pain?” It’s a bit tougher for us animal lovers. Interestingly, we are in the same boat as pediatricians in this way. We have to go by signs, feelings, intuition in some cases. And sometimes the truth is that…
Read ArticleUsing Dog Cancer Statistics
The one of the first steps in the plan for helping you with dog cancer in The Guide is data collection. Without data about your dog’s cancer, survival times, life quality during treatment, side effects, costs, nursing care you will be expected to do, your dog’s normal life expectancy and so on, you will be…
Read ArticleTreatment Plan Analysis in Real Life
Yesterday, a 13 year old Rottweiler came in to the hospital. She had been limping, and there was a swelling in her front leg, down on the forearm. It was firm and slightly warm to the touch. The area was about 4 inches long. We took X-rays of the sore leg. The films showed a…
Read ArticleMetronomic Chemotherapy
Traditional chemotherapy is moving in a new direction. In the past, chemotherapy used a strategy called Maximum Tolerated Dose (MTD). Simply put, this is giving the highest dose a patient can handle, ideally without an unacceptable risk of side effects. The reason this strategy is used in cancer medicine is that the drugs we have…
Read Article
Cerenia: An Option for Dogs with Vomiting
Cerenia can really help with dogs who are vomiting or getting nauseous. Ask your vet!
Read ArticleWhat is Treatment Plan Analysis?
Imagine you want to spend some time somewhere. Maybe the mountains, maybe the city…it is time for a trip. There are many ways to get there. Perhaps having as much time as possible there is your main goal. Maybe you drive at breakneck speed to get there, wasting no time, and extend your time there…
Read Article