On principal, I tend to shy away from promoting ANYTHING that Nestle has any connections to. I don’t buy brands like Purina for our cats or dogs, as I in all honesty do not think their ingredients are good enough for our pets. Always read your labels and always do your research when it comes to what keeps our pets (and us) healthy.
However, I do like to see dollars go to good initiatives even from companies like Nestle.
Today, on average, one in four dogs dies of cancer. For cats, it’s one in eight. The statistics are heartbreaking – but groundbreaking work being done at the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC) at the University of Guelph in treating cancer in pets is not only helping to keep beloved furry family members alive, it’s also deepening our understanding of the disease and leading to improved care for human cancer patients.
With sponsor support from Nestlé Purina PetCare Canada, the OVC Pet Trust today launched a new awareness and fundraising campaign called “Keep Cancer on a Leash.” The campaign features an irresistible new music video, “We Could Be Heroes,” featuring a pack of diva-esque dogs shown in a recording studio, tracking a group-effort awareness video in the tradition of the star-studded “Tears Are Not Enough” and “We Are the World” productions of the past.
When Callie died in my arms on the way to the vet, we found out later that she had been FILLED with tumors. You cannot imagine the guilt I carry around to this day, knowing that had I had her checked out when she had had her first ‘turn’ that perhaps we could have saved her. The sad thing about pet care is that money matters and we hesitate to take pets to the vet when we fear the cost of that visit. Mainly because for much that is diagnosed….there are not that many therapies available and all are pocket book crushing. The most pet owners do these days is hope their pet does not suffer.
Purina Canada is going to match up to $125,000 in individual donations to www.pettrust.ca to support this initiative with the Ontario Veterinary College.
The University of Guelph is the only Canadian member of the U.S. National Cancer Institute’s Comparative Oncology Trials Consortium, which is a network of 20 universities which run clinical trials in dogs to assess novel therapies – with an eye toward taking results of that research to support further human clinical trials.
“Dogs and humans are prone to similar types of cancer including lymphoma, osteosarcoma, melanoma and bladder cancer. So the more we can learn about canine forms of the disease, the more the potential exists for advances in treatment for cancer in people,” said Woods, who is also co-director of the University of Guelph’s Institute for Comparative Cancer Investigation.
Not that I want animals and my pets to be used as research for human conditions, learning more about cancer and how it affects all mammals is important to our understanding of the disease.
Our dog died from cancerous tumors 🙁
Ugh…so sorry…it was such a shock to us….never gotten over it