Quote: polly gregor

dogs owned by smokers do get cancer far more often then dogs owned by non-smokers

Sidetracking a bit here, but....

As far as I can tell that hasn't been conclusively shown yet. There IS one study that showed dogs with short or medium length noses are more likely to get lung cancer, but there was no correlation in long-nosed dogs. BUT, the long-nose dogs did get more nasal cancer. Based on the statistics of this one study, to say "far more often" is a bit of a stretch. http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/147/5/488?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=dogs&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1078757460637_834&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=1&journalcode=amjepid

Having said that, I will also say I'm one of the original anti-smokers. I was anti-smoking before anti-smoking was cool. In fact, I wouldn't even consider buying a puppy or dog from someone I know smokes in their home and raises the pups/dogs in their home. To me it's just common sense that second hand smoke is almost certainly detrimental to an animals' health, and it's probably only a matter of time before there is sufficient science to prove it. But until I see more reliable statistics, I'm not going to state it as a fact.

Now, I would LOVE to have more references to studies showing detrimental health effects on dogs (and cats) from second hand smoke. Because then I certainly would rub those studies in the smokers' faces. So, please, if you have more references, bring them on! I'm very willing to entertain the possibility you have better information than I can find, in which case I will be delighted that you can actually support my hunches with facts.

I'm going to go eat some chocolate now.

Hey, I wonder, do dogs owned by non-smokers have a better chance at doing well at tracking (all other things being equal) than dogs owned by smokers? Cuz if so, my pups and I are a shoe-in for a SchH III, hehehe!

Seriously, I found that most of the people I trained with smoked, drank, basically had any one (or several) of a variety of bad habits, and their dogs SEEMED none the worse for wear. And definitely didn't criticize them. But now I wonder, is smoking perpetually around a dog going to contribute to a lower tracking score? It would make sense, wouldn't it?

Does anyone know if Ivan Balabanov smokes?!