As I wrote last week in National Pet Cancer Awareness: What You Should Know, November is Pet Cancer Awareness Month. As I also wrote in that article, pet cancer reminds me of Budly because that’s why we had to put him to sleep.
But the week before Budly’s health took such a nose dive that we had to rush him to the animal ER, he got attacked.
The Attack
We were out for our usual morning walk and had stopped to talk with a neighbor who had just gotten a chocolate lab puppy.
All of a sudden this huge dog (I don’t know what breed it was exactly. Looked like a husky but it was much bigger than that.) came out of nowhere. I wasn’t too concerned at first. The neighbor seemed to know the dog, and it greeted the pup cordially enough. But it took one sniff of Budly and WHAMMO!
Next thing I know the dog’s got Budly’s throat and chest clenched in his jaws and Budly’s squealing the worst cry of pain I ever heard. Everything’s kind of fuzzy from then on. I remember screaming and trying to pull Budly from the dog’s mouth, then kicking him when he made another lunge for Budly, who was bloody and freaking out in fear.
Studies Show Dogs Can Detect Cancer
I remembered hearing about studies proving dogs can detect cancer. I think I’d seen it on the news, and when I did some research I found that, sure enough, I probably saw it on 60 Minutes. They ran a piece called “Sniffing for Disease.”
It was based on reports of people claiming their dogs had saved their lives because they kept sniffing them and acting differently. What had happened was they’d signaled their owners they had cancer.
Researchers tried to recreate similar scenarios and came up with dogs detecting cancerous samples with a 41 percent success rate.
But another group of researchers, the Pine Street Foundation, also conducted a study of dogs detecting breast and lung cancer which Integrative Cancer Therapies published in March 2006. Their study’s success rate was much higher, between 88 and 97 percent.
Was It the Cancer?
All of this got me to wondering about Budly’s attack. Maybe that dog had detected Budly’s cancer?
A week after the attack, when Budly started throwing up blood and we took him to the animal ER in the wee hours of the morning, the vet took x-rays. They revealed a large tumor consuming 99 percent of his stomach, as well as cancer throughout his lungs –which was right in the area of his chest the dog had ripped open and that had needed stitches.
I’ll never know for sure, but I will always wonder if that dog attacked because he’d smelled Budly’s cancer. Maybe it brought out some primal instinct, like the need to kill the sick and spare their suffering or something. What do you think?
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