Is Your Pet Susceptible To Second Hand Smoke?

Is Your Dog or Cat Suffering From Your Smoking Habits?

For Elizabeth, the first sign of concern came when her 7-year-old terrier Mike, appeared dizzy. His regular vet said everything was fine, but Elizabeth insisted Mike be seen by a neurologist. After an MRI scan, he found a tumor in Mike's inner ear. An operation followed, and for the next month, Elizabeth took Mike on a four-hour round-trip trek every day from her home in Greenwich, Connecticut to a specialty hospital in Boston for radiation therapy.

The total bill for the tests, blood work, surgery and radiation came to a sticker shock $14,000. This was not surprising in this age of sky-high medical costs, except for two very disturbing things. Mike is a Welch Terrier. Secondly, both Elizabeth and her boyfriend Ramon are very heavy smokers. Elizabeth goes through two packs of cigarettes a day. When Ramon comes over to her apartment, he smokes like a chimney. The second hand smoke generated in Elizabeth's apartment is so dense you could cut it with a knife.

After another surgery for Mike for another supposedly unrelated illness, the total cost of Mike's veterinary care has approached $20,000. Today Mike is a healthy, happy, little dog. However, Mike has a new nickname: "20K." More frightening for Elizabeth is neither she or her boyfriend have stopped smoking.

It's no secret that Americans love their pets, but it is also no secret Americans love to smoke cigarettes even more. But in these days, all that love for pets is leading to an unprecedented level of expense for millions of dog and cat owners, who are only now beginning to understand the concept of sticker shock. Caught up in a wave of new medical options and lured by an increasingly sophisticated cadre of veterinarians, pet orwners across the country are coughing up thousands -- and even tens of thousands -- of dollars to treat pet illnesses that would have gone undiagnosed or untreated just a few years ago. And then doing it again if they have to.

Of course, pet owners do not have the foggiest notion why their pets are getting sick from cancer and have to be put to sleep with an incurable disease. Most veterinarians have the animals' best interest in mind. But that doesn't make it any easier: With health insurance covering the humans in many families, it is not unusual for pet owners to spend far more money on health care for their cats and dogs than for their sons and daughters. Even the Great Recession failed to take a bite out of Fido's health care tab. According to reports by a number of market research companies, Americans spent $20 billion on veterinary bills in 2010, representing an 8.5% increase from a year earlier and more than double the amount spent just a decade ago.

So why is your pet dog or cat coming down with incurable forms of cancer, heart disease, and other maladies which turns your bank account inside out, and ultimately results in your having to put your beloved pet to sleep? The answer is you. Yes, I mean YOU!!

It is your habit of smoking. You had better hear the wake up call. If you want to enjoy your cat or dog for a long life, enriched with love that only a pet can provide, you had better give up your cigarettes. Your pet did not ask to be brought into your household, only to be poisoned to death. Your pet has given you many days of love and happiness. Its only reward is euthanasia.

Of all the compelling reasons to quit smoking, this one should make pet lovers sit up and take notice: there's ample scientific evidence to suggest that secondhand cigarette smoke can cause cancer in companion animals.

What is worse is that your furry friends just don't just inhale smoke. The smoke particles are also trapped in their fur and ingested when they groom themselves with their tongues. A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that dogs in smoking households had a 60 percent greater risk of lung cancer. A different study published in the same journal showed that long-nosed dogs, such as collies or greyhounds, were twice as likely to develop nasal cancer if they lived with smokers.

And in yet another study, vets from Tufts University found that cats whose owners smoked were three times as likely to develop lymphoma, the most common feline cancer.

So - short of kicking the habit - a cat owner named Mary Ellen has opted to getting stuck with a huge vet bill. She and her husband take three of their cats to the vet at least twice a year for checkups; the fourth, Barney, goes every three months. This is madness. Mary Ellen and her husband will not give up their cats, and they will not give up smoking either. It is an ugly contest.....who in their household will come down with cancer first?

The answer is up to you.....give up smoking or else give up your cat or dog.