What should I consider before choosing a dog cancer treatment?

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.

I would first try to understand what the cancer is, what its name is, what treatment protocol we're going to use, how much it's going to cost, and how many trips back and forth you might need to make to the veterinarian so that you really have a great understanding of what's about to happen. It's great to try to catch it as early as possible and then work together with the veterinary team, and sometimes we have to adapt it. If the chemotherapy made their white cell counts too low, we might skip a week and then start another week. So we'd have to be adaptable to the dog.