The One that Got Away

We've all had a dog or two that just stole our hearts. Carter was one of those dogs for me. She was as interesting and smart as she was loyal and fun. She died at the young age of 6 on Feb 14th, 2022 due to Lymphoma, a disease that could have been prevented with the proper diet. A ketogenic diet! More on that later. She was a blue German Shepherd/Dobe mix and she was a great listener as well as a great guard dog. God I miss her! She would always greet us when we came home from anywhere for any length of time and she always had to greet us with a gift in her mouth. Didn't matter if it was a toy or a leaf, she never greeted us without a gift. She really knew how to love on her people. One day I noticed a red lump on the roof of her mouth at the back near her throat when she was yawning. It didn't seem to bother her and the only symptom was an occasional gagging on her dry dog food. Otherwise, she was drinking, eating and eliminating just fine, until she wasn't. I started noticing that her anus was not closing up as quickly after eliminating. When I took her to the vet, they just put her on antibiotics. At this particular time, I had already scheduled to board her with a trainer because I wanted her to be even more awesome. So I asked the vet to do a complete check up on her. The vet found a mass in her ear canal, but removed it with no problem and it was just full of hair and skin particles. $1700 for her training and she was doing great! Fast forward 6 months later and she became very sick, vomiting and diarrhea so I took her back to the vet. Her lymph nodes were swollen and the mass in her mouth had gotten larger. They tried to biopsy it, but it just came back as possibly an infection. So then they tried aspirating her lymph nodes , same thing, some type of infection. They put her on the strongest antibiotics and she was in and out of their hospital some days. They couldn't figure out what was causing it. Meanwhile, I'm frantically searching for answers on the web. I was giving her garlic, colloidal silver, slippery elm and even started feeding a raw diet. It even came to a point when I was syringe feeding her because she stopped eating due to not being able to keep it down. But she was still drinking so I thought there was hope. She lost a lot of weight over time and then the day came when she wouldn't even drink water and I knew it was over. She was too weak to even get up to vomit. I knew that the next step was organ failure and that can be very painful so I made the decision to put her down. That killed me that I couldn't save her! I asked the vet to do an autopsy on her to find the cause so I could prevent this from happening to another dog. Lymphoma was the final diagnosis. I have since found a lady named Vera Anderson that had a dog that lived with Lymphoma for 9 years on her special Tagamet/Benedryl cancer protocol for anyone who is dealing with this silent cancer. For those that just want to prevent cancer or other chronic diseases in the first place, I will put a link below for the Keto raw diet. It is important to know that these two methods should not be mixed. Pick a protocol and stick to it. If your dog is on medication other than Prednisone or antibiotics, you should go with keto as there are drug interactions that can kill your dog in the former protocol. If you have not yet put your dog on any medications, you can easily find the protocol in her photos in her Facebook group linked above. It's the cheapest route to take that cause the least amount of suffering if any at all. I give this info away for free because I want to honor my dog by saving others. After the cancer is gone, you can quit the protocol and proceed to the Ketogenic diet linked below. Reach out to Mike Battaglia on Facebook in his group Ketogenic Dog Group or on his website linked below. Both Vera and Mike are a wealth of information and very friendly and responsive to questions. You can tell it's their passion so don't be afraid to ask. I truly hope I can help you help your dog because I know what it's like to lose a companion suddenly.