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.

I would say surgery is probably the most common treatment option for most. Then we have some tumors that tend to be more aggressive and metastatic. Those will need chemotherapies, and as we had talked about earlier, chemotherapy does not typically make animals sick and feel awful. People think it does in humans, so that's not typically what we want for their last days, months, or years on earth. We want compassionate care. Then radiation therapy is also very common. In tumors like melanomas, for instance, we can sometimes remove them and then do immunotherapy or antibody therapy or vaccine therapy. There are all kinds of things out there that we can do.

A tumor that bleeds has often been traumatized by the dog itself, bumped, or something like that. Some tumors outgrow their blood supply and then we'll have a center that weakens in the middle because it doesn't have enough blood, and it ruptures out. Use compresses or wrap it and then seek veterinary attention. We'll talk about options as to whether it can be surgically removed at that point.

It depends on the tumor. Some are soft and squishy and round like a lipoma. You'll find those in Labrador Retrievers under the skin many times. Some of them are very firm and hard tumors in the skin. You'll see that in certain sarcomas. With bone tumors, you'll see very painful swelling. It just depends, but for the most part, most owners are finding lumps and bumps on the dog, and that's what brings them to me.