National Pet Cancer Awareness Month

[Catherine]

November is being recognized as Pet Cancer Awareness Month. A lot of pets are diagnosed with cancer. Now there are stories of survival from cancer.
The article presents the story of ten pets who have had cancer. It is so amazing to see that pets are surviving cancer.


http://news.google.ca/news/url?sr=1&ct2=...t=2&at=dt0

There was a time when cancer was a death sentence for anyone. Then people started surviving. Now the same treatments are working for pets and they are surviving. This is a time to celebrate how much we are overcoming cancer and how much hope there is for us and our pets.

[Tobi]

It's good to have a cancer awareness scheme for animals. Sometimes when an animal is diagnosed it is already stage 4.
Many animals are very stoical about light discomfort or mild pain. So catching it early can be hard. And of course many cancers don't have any symptoms for ages. Any treatment -even natural -started early has a better chance.

We have to know what to look out for and ask for blood tests regularly, especially in older animals.

The incidences of cancer are increasing in both humans and animals. It makes me wonder why.

In the 'old days' when the air was full of toxins from factories, coal smoke, etc, people generally smoked everywhere, and inside buildings, nutrition wasn't that great for anyone and pets usually were fed scraps....the incidences of cancer were much rarer than they are today! Now whether that is because many didn't live as long, (so there wasn't time for the DNA to start copying 'mistakes') -or whether that was caused by some other thing, I don't know.
I have always felt cancer is an immune system error, mistake, or failure for some reason.

[Catherine]

Quote:In the 'old days' when the air was full of toxins from factories, coal smoke, etc, people generally smoked everywhere, and inside buildings, nutrition wasn't that great for anyone and pets usually were fed scraps....the incidences of cancer were much rarer than they are today! Now whether that is because many didn't live as long, (so there wasn't time for the DNA to start copying 'mistakes') -or whether that was caused by some other thing, I don't know.

I have always felt cancer is an immune system error, mistake, or failure for some reason.

Cancer is linked to the immune system. As I understand it cancer cells happen all the time and our immune systems deal with them. Some people have a genetic weakness that links to certain cancers. They are more likely to develop that cancer. Their immune systems are less likely to fight off the cancer.
Some people are exposed to things that trigger cancer cells or weaken the immune system or both.

All these things contribute to cancer rates. There is more cancer now for a number of reasons. We live longer and can develop the cancers that take years to trigger. All the toxins we were exposed to are finally showing up as cancers. 
We were exposed to obvious dangers before. Now there are still dangers, but not so obvious. The sun is just as hot as ever, but the ozone layer is thinner and more harmful radiation gets through. You can't detect it, but it is there and skin cancer rates are higher.

Our pets would be the same. They live long enough to develop cancer. They are exposed to much of the same things we are.
It is fortunate that dogs are responding to treatment.  They should benefit from the medical knowledge that we benefit from. After all many dogs have given their lives for medical research. It is only fair that they should benefit.

I don't know how they detect cancer in dogs. I suppose some sort of blood tests exist. It is never easy to detect cancer in the early stages.