Cancer in dogs

Question
I recently lost my border collie to cancer. This question may be unanswerable, but are there any known causes for cancer in dogs? I know there are a lot of unknowns with cancer, but what would you suggest to help prevent this in the future (if anything)? I have heard that nutrition can play a big part in this. What are some budget friendly brands of dog food that might be better for my dog?  Thank you


Answer
Trisha,

I'm very sorry to hear of your loss. While I can't say that feeding a quality food will prevent cancer, I like to think it eliminates diet as the cause. There are so many factors such as heredity, over vaccination, pesticides, and environment that come in to play but you can definitely eliminate known carcinogens (BHA, BHT, Ethoxyquin, etc) found in some dog food brands.

Premium Edge, Canidae, Innova, Fromm, Prairie, Taste of the Wild are good brands with lower prices in dry food but these are still going to be heavily processed foods. I'll give you a little comparison to human foods:

Cheap dry dog foods don't really have a human comp because the pet food industry uses substances that are illegal to use in human foods.

Good Dry Dog food = Human Fast Food (a mystery blend that you can live on but it isn't really "healthy")

Raw Dog Food = Organic Grocery store / Local Farmer (you know what you are actually eating and your body thrives)

There is some room between good dry and raw for things like canned, dried, dehydrated, etc but to really combat something as wide spread and poorly understood as cancer, you need a body in ideal physical condition and no dry food can achieve this. That said, by switching from cheap dry to good dry, you will at least take some of the carcinogens out of the mix.  

I hope this is helpful and wish you the best with your next canine pal!

Best,

Tracie Fowler
www.TrianglePet.com