Cancer. It’s scary stuff. Every day, I hear another story of an elderly dog and cat diagnosed with neoplasia, and my heart hurts for those dealing with it. Without a doubt, cancer sucks, and every new breakthrough is a gift.

There’s lots of theories and evidence pointing to different causes of cancer. Food, say some. Chemicals, say others. Vets peddling food and chemical-laden vaccines, say many. And I’m here to tell you this: They’re right.

What? Say it ain’t so!

It’s true. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and going back through my years of work in the veterinary field, and I’m here to tell you this: In the United States, the leading causes of cancer in dogs and cats are:

Vets Lead to Cancer. There, I said it.

The epiphany came to me a couple of years ago, when I was in Granada, Nicaragua. Life is simpler there, freed of the constraints and interferences from big companies typical of our American lifestyle. The dogs down there? They are free.

Down in many of the places I’ve visited such as Granada, Iquitos, and Turks and Caicos, the dogs aren’t exposed to commercial pet foods. They eat like their ancestors, from what they can scavenge.

They don’t get injected with toxins/vaccines/anything.

And they certainly don’t have their reproductive organs rudely removed. They live and die the way God intended, without Big Corporate Interference.

And when you compare the causes of death in these areas to the causes of death here in the States, one thing is for sure:

When Vets, Pet Foods, and Medicine Stay out of the Picture, Cancer Does Too.

(Well, except for that nasty transmissible venereal tumor that is rampant in stray populations in tropical and subtropical climates and leads to a premature agonizing death, but let’s look past that all-natural death for a minute.)

Here’s the thing that has had researchers and doctors and scientists scratching their heads for years: No one can predict when cancer will strike. Sure, there are certainly things that can predispose one to tumorigenesis, such as genetics (sorry, Golden Retriever lovers), or the feline leukemia virus (sorry, 2-3% of all cats in the US with this vaccine preventable illness), but the truth is cancer is a capricious, heartless bastard.

Sometimes it strikes young people or pets who have eaten nothing but organic kale salad and free range chicken their entire lives. Sometimes it skips that old person who’s been pumping themselves full of tobacco and GMOs and grain-fed beef, or the dog who’s been swimming in toxic waste on a daily basis.

The Number One Cause of Cancer Is This

There are plenty of known risk factors for the development of cancer in certain populations, but only one that without a doubt spans all species in all countries: AGE. Age causes cancer.

If only you had died before you were thirteen, Kekoa, this bone cancer thing never would have happened. Can I ever forgive myself?

When I was in Granada, what was the main reason I saw so few dogs with cancer? Was it their diet of plastic wrappers and banana peels? (No.) Their lack of vaccines? (No.) It was because until World Vets showed up with their evil boxes of toxins and Frankenkibble and neuter packs, the average lifespan of a dog down there was four years old.

Big Pharma, Big Pet Food, and Big Vet Med directly correlate with the number one cause of cancer: living long enough to get it.

That horrible Nationwide ad from the SuperBowl has nothing on us.

Just kidding! World Vets got him set up with vaccines and dewormers. He’s one of the lucky ones.

The cocoon of health

If you want to keep your pet from dying of cancer, get suspicious bumps checked out asap, don’t let your pet pick up smoking, and cross your fingers. Or kill them off early by letting them get so fat they develop diabetes or die of heat stroke the first warm summer day you try to go for a walk. I guess that works too.

Living as we do in a comfortable place with reliable access to medical care, we’ve forgotten about the realities of all-natural living, for us and for our pets. Measles. Polio. Rabies. Organic, GMO free viruses that will kill you.

Vaccine preventable diseases suck, which is why the vaccines were developed in the first place. They are far preferable to the disease itself, and if you say otherwise (some people have), I invite you to the streets of India where rabies kills lots of children, every day. 55,000 people a year worldwide-mostly children, and 20 MILLION dogs culled in an attempt to control it.

Pet food is a reliable and affordable way to feed pets for 95% of the population here in the States. If you want to cook for your pet, more power to you, but remember this: Even the gnarliest brand you can think of is better than starving, and if you say otherwise (some people have!) I invite you to Iquitos to decide which dogs are healthy enough to save and which we have to euthanize out of kindness.

Number of people who turned down free vaccines, vet care, and food in Granada: Zero, because they were sick of seeing dead dogs in the street. Pets finally living to ten years, the age at which cancer becomes the leading cause of death, is pretty priceless.

The Four Horsemen of the Dogpocalypse

The four horsemen of the apocalypse are, if I recall correctly, Vaccines, Pet Food, Rational Debate, and Veterinarians. Oh wait, I got that backwards. It’s Pestilence, Famine, War, and Death- the stuff the first four are trying to prevent.

How easily we forget that in our armchair indignation.

Pawcurious: With Pet Lifestyle Expert and Veterinarian Dr. V.