Cancer in dogs - on the rise?

Does anyone else think that over the years cancer in dogs is on the rise?

If so why do you think that is?

Personally I would suspect diet - if human food has become so processed and lacking in nutrients but with higher anti-nutrients, I would imagine dog food is heading for the same fate.

What do you think? And what can we do about it?

I was only thinking to myself yesterday about how cancer is on the rise all around really isn't it? Having watched avidly about the Japanese nuclear disaster and finding out that this is the very thing that causes all cancers, I have now answered my own question - it's in the air we breathe!

I don't buy this theory that it was around for donkey's years, just that we didn't have the facilities back then for curing it, coz people (and dogs) weren't being diagnosed at the rate they are now! Soooo many people and dogs around me who have it at the moment, it's quite frightening.

Food and air imo - we have to eat and we have to breathe, so there's no escape

I seem to remember an article about inbreeding causing problems like increased cancer?

I guess we dont know the full picture, it might be as simple as more being reported - but it does seem there is alot of cancer

I think its a combo of poor diet/lack of exercise pollution and inbreeding.

I would say cancer in dogs is more prevelant than it used to be and I would guess the reasons are pretty much the same with dogs as the suspected causes of human cancers including;
..a 'cocktail' of chemicals,
..atmospheric pollutants including pesticides,
..food additives and preservatives,
..advances in medical treatments mean some dogs live longer than they may have previously done making them more at risk of age related cancers.

ETA I have not mentioned the genetic element to cancers,that is not new.

Do you not think it seems to be on the increase because we have more facilities now for hearing about all the different cases? This forum is a classic example.

This is in addition to the improvements in modern veterinary medicine which means more dogs are living longer whereas at one time they would have just died of 'old age' which could have been cancer related, it was just never investigated and the dog allowed to die of natural causes.

It has definitely been around for many, many years in people, and we haven't the facilities to sometimes find it, let alone treat it (I won't write cure, as cancers can't be cured as a rule).

For instance, I suspect lots of people (and animals!) died from various cancers without even knowing what they had before we had MRI/CT/ultrasound/x-rays etc - if a cancer doesn't have specific symptoms (visible lumps, pain etc) how else can it be found?

What springs to mind is Hevvur - the PET scans she has had to see whether there are active cancer cells in her body didn't even exist when she first had cancer in 2002 (and that isn't THAT long ago)! Now, they are an integral part of finding and treating cancer!

There are new regimes of chemo being developed all the time; research centres are finding ways to target different cancers using genetic material and different drugs. Hevvur has been on a trial treatment, which, in years to come, could be the breakthrough the medical community is looking for in order to treat cancers on an individual and genetic level.

I do think our environment has quite a lot to do with how bodies react to it; however I'm not convinced that 'natural' diets, cutting out additives etc, is an effective preventative. Of course, you can eat healthily, exercise regularly and cut out things that are contributary to cancer (e.g. smoking in humans) to help prevent it; but, as Mini says - some cancers have a genetic link, or are hereditary.

Cancer happens on a genetic level to everyone (inc animals) every day; however the majority of immune systems kill the rogue cells before they have a chance to develop far enough.

It's definately on the rise.

Fertilisers on crops, and in farmers fields running into streams...bad commercial dog foods....too many chemicals going into our dogs...vaccs...bad breeding.

That's what I reckon anyhoo

I agree that there may be more contributing factors in our environment nowaday but I also think it's a case of being more aware of it too. As said, in the past we may not have even known that a dog had cancer - it may have just died quite suddenly and been chalked up to old age or "one of those things", without a second thought. A dog with cancer may have died from another health issue or an accident and no one would have known the dog had cancer. You may not have heard about cases of cancer because you weren't online, or weren't on a dog forum, or didn't read any articles about it.
However, I do believe diet can play a part of some cancers. Having owned rats for years, tumours are something you're bound to face at one point. Interestingly, in the rat fancy there was a correlation noted between a popular brand of commercial food and tumours in rats. Switching foods showed a dramatuc decrease in the amount of lumps found in rats. You could chalk this up to coincidence - those fed this brand of food could've developed tumours regardless of what they'd eaten and those fed on something else may just have not had a predisposition to it but it happened in multiple homes, with multiple generations of rats, with this brand of food being the common denominator, it was enough to put me off feeding that food - and I think it was enough for the manufacturer too who soon changed the ingredients. The suspected culprit was the cheap chicken potentially pumped full of growth hormones, this was just speculation I think but it does get you wondering. Unfortunately nowadays there's so much conflicting information on what's good and what's bad. Even organic, non-GM stuff gets bad press and I just wouldn't know what the best option was, other than raising my own chickens and rabbits to feed my dogs - but then there's the dilemma of what to feed them, so I'd have to grow my own chicken feed too I just hope it never happens to my two.

I agree with much of this - food, additives, pollutants and vaccine ingredients all have the potential to cause cancer and/or affect the immune system, and improved knowledge and diagnosis may show up more cancers.