K9 Immunity Plus — Hope For Dogs With Cancer!
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8:32 am
25 August 2010
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I am getting ready to take Golly in this morning for a micro-chip and remembered something about it could possibly cause cancer. I went on-line and started researching and found lots of cases where that seems to be true, now I am really re-thinking the whole thing. I need some advice! Here is a medical study that supports the cancer diagnosis from chips… http://www.chip…..s/P074.pdf
Would you/did you micro-chip? Why or why not?
Elizabeth, Sammy's mom
here's our two cents….
everyone in our pet family is chipped – dogs and cats. there might be a slight chance that the chips can increase the possibility of cancer….but there's a chance your dog will be run over by a bus, shot by a neighbor or taken by aliens, too.
if your pet is ever missing, the shelters wand all strays, looking for chips. vets check for chips on strays as well. without a chip to use for identification and then contact to the owner, pups (and cats) run the risk of quick euthanasia at an overcrowded shelter. ET has so many pets at the shelters, a microchip is the best insurance we have, if our pups would ever get lose and we couldn't immediately find them.
we have chipped since chips were available, and i don't believe in the least that this had any impact on gayle getting a STS or melanoma. chips keep pets safe.
charon & spirit gayle
9:10 am
25 August 2010
OfflineDid you check out the link I supplied? It is an eye opener. I agree completely the chips are a great way to keep your info on your dog in the case of the collar coming off. I just am really unsure about the cancer thing. I don't EVER ever EVER want to lose a loved one to this again.
I would still chip all my pets. I did read the article and honestly, the data doesn't look very convincing. (although I'm probably jaded because I just took all my stats and research methods classes in school so my skeptical hat is still on.) They didn't use very many dogs and in the two cases where they did develop cancer, the dogs were 9 and 11 already and only had the microchips for under two years. I think it's an interesting idea but the data isn't quite solid enough to keep me from chipping them. Plus our girl Sasha was diagnosed at 3 years old with fibrosarcoma and she isn't chipped. I totally understand the fear though and after dealing with this horrible disease once, I sympathize with not wanting to face it ever again. 
Yes, elizabeth, i did read the pdf file you provided. none of us wants to go through cancer again, but i'm sure many of us will, as this is a disease that is not well enough understood. i agree with sashadog, the info provided would not make me 'not chip'.
i got breast cancer, i drink bud light…is there a correlation??? i don't think they need to pull bud light off of the shelves, but i could be wrong….think i'll err on the side of chipping and tipping…
charon & spirit gayle
11:17 am
25 August 2010
OfflineWell, we just came back from Golly's "chipping". I read about how there is a class action suit brewing against "home again" company. My vet tech told me that she has all 17 of her dogs chipped and hasn't had to deal with cancer.
I think this is important to do because of how fast a furry family member can be lost. It makes me think though, of all 4 of my dogs, Sammy was the only one chipped and the only one who got cancer. I'm just so scared that I could do something that would directly affect the outcome of whether or not my fur kid has to face this awful disease. 
I guess we are all in now.
I like the "tipping" idea. I wish it was 5 o'clock here 
Elizabeth,
This is kind of a double-edged sword. I read the pdf and I do understand your concern. When Angel Merlin had his TPLO surgery, my research also pointed to a link between the hardware used for that surgery and the increased incidence of cancer at the site. So, there may well be some concern about foreign objects in the body. In his case we had to weigh the fact that he couldn't go through life unable to walk just because the surgery might cause a problem years later. Unfortunately he died one month after surgery (vets suspected pre-existing cancer that was not yet causing symptoms but went haywire while his body was weakened from the surgery).
However, we also know that there are SO many things in today's world that are suspected of causing cancer or other serious illness – dog food, flea and tick meds, lawn chemicals, etc etc etc. Several studies on OSA indicated that it has a tendency to appear in an area of prior injury/breakage. Maybe it's just that the cancer is going to develop no matter what and it just picks the easiest/weakest body spot to appear.
Also, our Spanky died of liver failure and our Merlin died of suspected cancer. Zeus has cancer now. None of them were ever microchipped. Yet they still got cancer (or another system failure, in Spanky's case).
I guess my point is that we really don't know. You just have to make the best decisions that you can to keep him safe and healthy and try not to overthink it. I think Charon has a really good point that if you don't have the chip and he gets lost and then put to sleep by an overcrowded shelter before you can claim him, then all your worries about long term cancer stats wouldn't really matter anyway…
fightingforsammy said
Well, we just came back from Golly's "chipping". I read about how there is a class action suit brewing against "home again" company. My vet tech told me that she has all 17 of her dogs chipped and hasn't had to deal with cancer.I think this is important to do because of how fast a furry family member can be lost. It makes me think though, of all 4 of my dogs, Sammy was the only one chipped and the only one who got cancer. I'm just so scared that I could do something that would directly affect the outcome of whether or not my fur kid has to face this awful disease.
I guess we are all in now.
I like the "tipping" idea. I wish it was 5 o'clock here
Holy smokes! 17 dogs!? The fact that she hasn't had to deal with cancer is lucky in and of itself, all chips statistics aside.
Jerry wrote about this subject in the News blog back in 2007, with links to a few related articles for more information:
RFID Microchips and The Canine Cancer Connection
Posted by jerry on Sunday, December 16th 2007
For the record, Jerry was chipped and his tumor appeared high on the scapula. Coincidence? We will never know.
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Tazzie set the record straight in this post from a few years ago. I'm going with it, and will continue to error on the side of safety for animals by microchipping.
This microchip /cancer story has been going around for a few years now. It is based on a study in mice where a few had tumors at the microchip site. The one or two dogs with tumors near the site were not proven to be due to the microchip.
If a tumor would be caused by a microchip it would most likely be a fibrosarcoma (similiar to the tumors cats can get from vaccines) because this is a tumor of SQ tissue. You would not expect osteosarcoma, unless the microchip had been implanted in bone.
The main problem with microchips in the States is that different companies have different frequencies which are picked up by different scanners. Shelters are supposed to have "universal scanners" to read all microchips but this is not always the case. The most common chips are AVID and Home Again.
The AVMA did a survey of oncologists after the internet report came out and not one oncologist reported cancers that they thought were due to microchips, yet many lost pets have been reunited with their owners because of this technology! I guess it is a personal choice, but all 3 of my dogs have microchips.
Pam and Tazzie
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Read my story here.
This is just my opinion but I'm not so sure I want something "foreign" implanted in my dogs. How about tatooing instead?
Tracy, Maggie's Mom
maggie.tripawds.com
"It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get back up." ~ Vince Lombardi
I know, it's creepy isn't it? I mean if we don't do it on humans, why dogs? Hmmm. Makes you think.
Tattooing isn't always something that can be identified. One of our members, sashadog, came with a tattoo and despite her pawrents best efforts to trace it, they haven't been able to.
Latest Tripawds News
Read my story here.
Haha! Yeah! You should have seen Sasha's face while we were trying to shave her ear and then hold a flashlight up to it to try and read all the numbers clearly 
, not to mention there's no standardized number system to try and track them. Tattoos are not ideal… We could tag their ears like cattle have?! Just joking… that'd be terrible. But in all reality, I just really try and never lose my dogs. However, my two older dogs are both microchipped and it has brought them home safe several times. (Long stories but it all happened while they were being dogsat by a neighbor 
) The only dog that I've ever had to fight cancer with is the only dog I've ever had that's NOT microchipped. Go figure right?
There's no easy answer I guess…
Oh crap! Now I have to worry about our dogs being taken by aliens! Thanks Charon….like I don't have enough phobias.
All microchipped over here! Even if it did cause cancer, I can handle losing my pet to cancer over losing my pet to a shelter and being put down. I know I couldn't ever live with myself if that happened.
Mr. Monkeybutt Wonderful has a tattoo too! Mommy thought it was a "Z" for "Zorro" until the vet said no, it's an "N" for neutered. It's hideous.
Comet - 1999 to 2011She departed us unexpectedly January 23, 2011 at the age of 12 1/2.
She was born with a deformed front leg and a tripawd all of her life.
Well in my small sample size:
Maggie, no chip, two kinds of cancer. Tani, no chip, one kind of cancer. Obie, chip (by the rescue org.) no cancer (at least not yet, knock, knock, knock).
I am cautious with cancer studies when the sample size is small. Of course I live in California where almost everything is suspected of causing cancer, so I may just be a bit jaded.
I suppose when you introduce something into the body there is some added risk of a couple different things. I guess I've put myself in the risk category with the odds and ends that the surgeon has added to repair my joints.
Karen and the Pugapalooza
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