November 8, 2013

Follow-up Friday: More Cancer Stuff and Some Not-Cancer Stuff

It's Follow-Up Friday - the blog hop where we follow up on former posts, answer questions, share funny comments and wrap up the week! 


Dogs of Blogville Calendar
Remember waaay back in August when I asked you to vote to get Rita in the Dogs of Blogville Calendar? Well, they arrived, and they're gorgeous! Big thanks to Jodi of Heart Like a Dog and Julie of Daily Dog Blog for putting these together!


Looking forward to seeing Rita's big ol' face on my wall in June, plus all the other gorgeous pups!
The calendars raised over $1200! The money will go to Benny's mom to help pay his cancer bills. Sadly, Benny lost his fight, so our condolences go out to his mom. Blogville also lost another beautiful soul this week: Norman, Mr. August, from Sand Spring Chesapeakes lost his battle with osteosarcoma. So our condolences go out to his mom, too. :(

I know Benny and Norman are running pain free now at the bridge, and I'm sure my Abby is flirting shamelessly with both of them. (While angel Bailey sniffs the perimeter.) 

Now Some Happy Stuff
I know you remember me going on and on about the Morris Animal Foundation Gala of Hope. They posted some pics from it on their blog, and I had to share this one of Betty White kissing Parker Pup
How cute is that? And they're getting together to fight canine cancer, so kind of a perfect pic for this post. (Not sure who I'm more jealous of... Parker for getting to kiss Betty, or Betty for getting to kiss Parker??)

Something Not About Cancer!
I shared on Monday that Rita is our first graduate from obedience school! Hooray Rita! This comment from Alfie cracked me up: "Roooo When I went to puppy classes all the other dogs got a certificate with the word 'pass' on them. I got one that said 'attended' *Waggy tail*. I was quite a naughty pup - but if I ever saw those other pups now, I'd give them a run for their money with all the tricks I've learned since *Waggy tail*"  It's no wonder Alfie is a co-host for the Monday Mischief hop! 

Okay, MORE Stuff About Cancer
Wednesday we kicked off the quarterly Give Cancer the Paw hop, and thanks so much to everyone who joined or stopped by to read/comment on the posts! 

Including Peggy's Pet Place and yours truly, we had 18 posts in the hop! And there were some super interesting and very touching posts. There was even a post about cancer rates in ferrets. I had no idea ferrets had such a high rate of cancer. Anyone thinking of getting a ferret should definitely read that post!

There were lots of comments and questions to my post that I wanted to follow up on. But first, let me say thanks to everyone for not saying you think we're crazy for taking artemisinin. I know most folks never heard of it, and it's not been tested as a preventative, but . . . we're doing it. We only take it three days per month, and it has very low instances of side effects, so we'll see. (Maybe you do think we're crazy. You are right, we are a little crazy. But thank you for not saying so in writing. I appreciate it.)

On to the comments. First up, Sue from Talking Dogs Blog added a tip to my list: "no plastic food or water bowls. I've had a dog with mouth cancer and subscribe to: better safe than sorry." A very good point and worth mentioning! (I didn't think of it because we've always used ceramic - not a good idea cuz when your hands are wet you drop the bowl and break it! Or, ya know, I've heard that can happen - or stainless steel.)

Roxy from Roxy the Traveling Dog said, "I had a friend years ago that fed her dog only people food. The dog got cancer at a very early age. Her vet told her it was from the people food diet. Have you ever heard of that?" I have not heard of that. I must admit that I think that at the essence of what we eat (or SHOULD eat), there is no difference between "people food" and "dog food" (good proteins, veggies, whole grains). But maybe she was feeding Cheetos? Oreos? That kind of "people" food would be bad. Or maybe she overfed the dog? Also bad. Anyway, I would think if the pup got cancer very early on it was probably a genetic thing, and not much could be done to prevent that (like with our Abby). I just hope the vet didn't make her feel guilty!

Taryn from A Tail of Two Cardis added the tip to "avoid lawn chemicals. They are a proven cause of cancer in dogs." And she also stated, "The filtered water is a great tip! My coworker's cat died of cancer and her oncologist said that (in his opinion) serving your pet filtered water is the #1 thing you should do to help avoid cancers." So, there's another oncologist saying filtered water is one of the most important things. Maybe they know something?

Following on the filtered water tip, Pam from Words with Wieners said, "There are so many filters/types of filters out there... it's hard to know which to use. I guess any of them would be better than nothing at all, of course. Would you mind sharing what kind of filter you use?"

I confess I never researched this. Well, I researched it a little, but it's confusing, so I just went with a Brita for a long time. It's probably not the best one out there, but it was easy and we are lazy, and I figured it was better than nothing. When we moved to our new house, we lucked out cuz the folks who lived here before had put in a reverse osmosis system. I've heard they are a bit pricey to install, but my friend did a lot of research on it and ended up also putting in an RO system. She seemed to think it was the best and worth the money. I looked it up quickly yesterday and while some folks say RO is great because it removes ALL the impurities and chlorine and stuff in your water that will slowly kill you, it also removes ALL the minerals, which you actually need. Huh. So, now I'm confused again. But at least we're stripping out all the junk, so that's good.

Lisa from Dogs N Pawz said, "Great tips! Have you ever heard of Haelen 951? I think I spelled it right. It is a cancer drug that boosts the immune system 750%. It is also a preventative for all kinds of stuff... It is expensive but probably worth it. I'm going to have to do a post on it and more research!" I've never heard of that. We'll look forward to your post so we can learn more about it!

Wow, that was a lot of followin' up, but there were some good comments that I thought were important to share with y'all! I hope you thought the hop was a good idea and we hope to see even more of you out hopping next time on February 6th! (Don't worry, I'll remind you!)

Thanks to Jodi of Heart Like a Dog and Emma from My GBGV Life for co-hosting Follow Up Friday! 

12 comments:

  1. I was kicking myself because I thought it was later in the week, but we've had our share of cancer battles. I never thought about plastic bowls, either, but we've always used stainless steel, mainly because some puppies find chewing plastic bowls irresistible.

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  2. Great round up to the week and the calendar is pawsome. Benny & Lily will be so pleased. Have a fabulous Friday.
    Best wishes Molly

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  3. Great follow up! We did away with plastic stuff a long time ago - for critters and humans - and at the same time became even more vigilant about chemicals in general. When we lived in VA we looked into an RO system, but, like you, I ended up feeling uncertain since it filtered out all the good stuff, too! Sometimes it is just hard to know what to do. Love that photo of Betty and Parker :-)

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  4. I really wanted to write a post about my experience with cancer with my first Cardi, but times are hectic right now and I just couldn't get it done. Hopefully next time...

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  5. Happy Friday! catching -up. Great post on the Cancer and see you guys decided on red n black (as we suggested). 50/50 on the plastic and homemade human food. In any case, C is horrible, we have a bit of a scare recently and still processing it ... What a Golden SWEET photo of Parker n Betty White. Lots of Golden Woofs, Sugar

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  6. Thanks for the cancer blog hop. We have no direct experience, fortunately, so we did learn a lot. "Benign" is one of our favorite words.

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  7. Hi Jackie, great follow-up and thank you for joining the hop!

    If you're crazy then I'm crazy. Oops, that might not be helping your cause. :-D We've filtered our water for years, we also filter the dogs. We figure if it's good for us, it's good for them. I do use plastic to carry food to work in, but I never reheat in it. But I never thought about it in terms of the dogs bowls. While they eat from stainless steel, their water dish is...dut dut dut...plastic. Crap! I'm going to the pet store tomorrow and replacing that bowl!

    Glad you like the calendars, I'm so happy we had such a positive response to them and that you love them. I find myself looking forward to the next month, when I get to look at another one of friends.

    Have a great weekend!

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  8. Thanks for joining FUF :) We got our calendar this week too and it looks awesome, we will give Rita snacks every time we look at her in June! Cancer is so nasty and I don't think it is just one thing, I think it is either genetic or a combination of genes and what you do in life, but no matter, it is simply awful!

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  9. Love the photo of Betty and Parker! I think the hop was great....so much great information to learn. We still have a couple plastic bowls kicking around but mostly we use ceramic or stainless steel. The lawn chemicals was a great one to mention too. We don't use them....we don't care what our lawn looks like...we have dogs. LOL I wanted to read all of the posts in the hop, but I haven't quite made it yet, but I'm going to read some more this weekend!

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  10. Nice follow up. And you answered a lot of questions it seems. I bet you never wanted to know as much as you do about cancer. But if you can educate some of us, then it has to make you feel better.

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  11. That was a great FUF and thank you for your words for Norman. Miss that guy! Thank you also for the new blog hop and for high lighting some of the stuff other bloggers had tips for. I didn't get a chance to read all through them as it was a sad week. :( have a great weekend.

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  12. I love the calendar!
    You've brought together really useful information.

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