Free The Dog Cancer Survival Guide by Susan Ettinger Demian Dressler Page A

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?”
     

Early Detection Is Key
    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.
     
Why Didn’t My Vet Catch This Earlier?
    This is a complicated question, and there is no one “right” answer. Let’s start with the most