Why Good Nutrition is Vital for Dogs With Cancer

Posted by Clare Bristow

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Nutrition plays a vital role in your dog's fight against cancer.

As mentioned in the article about dog cancer treatment options , the primary aim of dog cancer treatment is to provide a good quality of life for your dog.

One of the indicators your vet will use to determine your dog's life is quality is his appetite (note 1). Should your dog lose his appetite, and as a consequence eats infrequently, his body condition will worsen. Dogs with poor body condition do not respond well to, and take longer to recover from, cancer treatments. Overall their quality of life will be poor.

Feeding your dog an anti-cancer diet, and doing what you can to help your dog maintain his appetite will certainly help him in his cancer battle.

Why is Nutrition Important?

Tumor cells thrive on carbohydrates - they use them for getting the energy they need to grow and reproduce at a rapid rate.

Tumor cells cannot use fat that is in your dog's body, so a high fat starves the tumor cells of the food they need to multiply.

It's believed that an optimal diet for your dog is one that is very low in carbohydrates, is high in Omega 3 fatty acids and contains moderate protein which helps with cell regeneration and repair.

Homemade Diet v Prepared Diet

It's entirely up to you whether you make your own food or purchase it, and your vet will help you to devise a good diet for your dog.

At HelpYourDogFightCancer.com, Laurie Kaplan provides details of the homemade diet she gave her dog Bullet (who suffered with Lymphoma). Essentially Bullet's diet consisted of 75% meat, 25% vegetables plus eggs and supplements. He had no carbohydrates at all - this meant no rice, potato, pasta or bread and nothing containing sugar and starch.

If you prefer to buy your dog food, Hills n/d Diet has been shown to increase the life expectancy of dogs with lymphoma . In tests carried out by the company, those dogs that ate Hills n/d Diet food and had chemotherapy treatment went into remission quicker and stayed in remission for longer than those dogs who had chemotherapy but weren't eating the n/d diet.

Similar tests haven't been carried out on dogs with other forms of cancer, but the inference is that the results would be similar.

Hills n/d diet food is expensive dog food, so if you'd rather buy an off the shelf dog food, look for one that is low in carbohydrates and has higher percentages of protein and fat .

You can also add supplements, such as Omega 3, to your dogs diet. There are many supplements available, but there is no reliable evidence as to which ones work and which ones have no effect. If you are interested in adding supplements, a discussion with a holistic vet could save you a great deal of research time, and money on ineffective products.

Why Your Dog May Lose His Interest in Food

Your dog may lose his interest in food for a number of reasons which are related either to the cancer itself or to side effects from cancer treatments .

The location of the tumor can influence your dog's willingness and/ore ability to eat. For example, if your dog has oral cancer, tumors in his mouth may make chewing and swallowing food very difficult. Depending on how the oral cancer is treated, surgery may leave your dog without part of his tongue, and radiation therapy can lead to ulceration of the area of the mouth around the tumor - all these factors will make it more difficult for your dog to eat his food.

Chemotherapy treatments can cause side effects such as nausea, diarrhea and dehydration. Again, if your dog is experiencing any of these, his appetite is likely to be greatly reduced.

What you must look out for, and be prepared to deal with, is a learned behavior called food aversion. This occurs when your dog associates eating with the feelings of, for example, pain, nausea and diarrhea , and so won't eat for fear of bringing on any of these symptoms.

Keeping Your Dog Interested in Food

Keeping your dog interested in food, and trying to prevent food aversion developing is quite a challenge. One thing you must resist is forcing your dog to eat - much as we want them to eat, pushing food into your dog's mouth will make his food aversion stronger and you'll have even more trouble trying to get him to eat .

Here are a few suggestions for keeping your dog interested in his food:

Provide a variety of tasty fresh foods;
Warming food to just below body temperature can enhance the smell, and so the appeal, of many foods. However, if your dog has food aversion, it's likely that it is the smell of food that he associates with feeling pain, nausea etc. If this is the case, serving food at a cooler temperature may encourage your dog to eat;
Give your dog his food in a different place - if he's used to eating in the kitchen, try the deck or dining room or try somewhere that he's always associated with good things;
Make mealtimes as relaxing as possible, sit and talk to your dog and make a fuss of him and leave his food bowl nearby; and
Divide your dog's food up into small portions and try to encourage him to eat throughout the day.

In addition, work with your vet to find a way to keep your dog's pain under control, and keep nausea, diarrhea and dehydration to a minimum. This is where keeping a log comes into it's own - if you can maintain a detailed account of what your dog eats, the side effects of any medication, when food aversion started, behavioral changes etc, this will help you and your vet develop the best plan for treating your dog thereby giving the best quality of life you can.

Note 1 - I mentioned above that appetite was one of the indicators used for measuring your dog's life quality. The Animal Medical Center in New York City has developed a Performance Scale to assess overall quality of life. It considers 5 factors that affect an animal's ability to carry on its normal activities, and these are: