National Pet Cancer Awareness Month

[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.