That's very individual. Surgery is pretty much the mainstay for many tumors. That would be the one you would choose. Chemotherapy, for instance, often depends on the owner’s budget and schedule. I always encourage owners, if they are very interested, to seek a consultation with an oncologist, and they can give you options. There are often options for every budget and every schedule available—not always, but many times there are. You can at least get that consultation to know what your options are.

Pet insurance and twice-yearly exams can help. Then we notate any lumps and bumps that we find. We notate their size. We've done fine needle aspirates, and we have those results logged on records. It's easier for us to detect if things are changing. There are certain benign lumps and bumps where it’s OK to monitor and not do anything about. If they're changing, then we start talking about options to investigate further.

What you would see is they will stop eating for days. They start not doing the behaviors they usually do in interacting with our owners and things like that. Dogs tend to be very social critters with their owner. When they stop caring about their family members, sometimes it’s a sign that they're not feeling well.

It depends on the tumor. For instance, sarcomas tend to be locally aggressive tumors of connective tissue. Some dogs will live years with those with supportive care and palliative therapy. It depends on the type of tumor that we're dealing with or the type of cancer we're dealing with, where it is, how big it is, and things like that.

There again, it depends on the individual case. It depends on how aggressive or advanced the particular cancer is. By the time it's detected, some dogs will live weeks to months, while others will live for years. Lymphoma patients, for instance, can live several years.

Some chemotherapy agents can cause changes in the blood parameters and decrease the immune system transiently. Those patients are monitored to make sure that their body is safe to have the chemo. That's one side effect, and you can get nausea with certain chemos, but we try to combat that ahead of time with anti-nausea agents.