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He has a terminal illness called tonsillar squamous cell carcinoma. That is a skin cancer that originated in his tonsils. It has since metastasized to other parts of his body. Initially he was given three months to live, but he was diagnosed in December of 2013 and is still here. As you can see from the photo, the only physical indication that he is not well is the fairly large tumor on his throat.

The presence of this tumor is upsetting- not only to my family and myself because we know that it signifies the inevitable death of a dog we love very much, but it also upsets people who really don’t know any better. For some reason, probably thanks in part to sensationalism from the media and animal rights groups, everybody wants to look at a dog and see some form of neglect or abuse. What I mean by that is that people will look at my Xolo and see a lump on his neck and they immediately assume he hasn’t seen a vet or he is suffering from this disease because of neglect on my part.

I have seen this time and time again, not just with my own dogs but with any picture of any obviously sick dog shared on the internet. “Look how thin he is! This dog is clearly being neglect.” “Look at that tumor! Why haven’t they had it removed yet??” “This person should have their animals taken away, they clearly aren’t taking care of them because that dog is matted!”

Let me tell you a little secret about cancer: no matter how many times you cut it off, it comes back. My family explored our options for removing the tumor from Pete’s neck. I distinctly remember sitting in the vet office, clutching Pete’s little trembling body to my chest, and asking tearfully about removing the tumor “because he seems like he’s doing just fine other than the lump on his neck”. The vet tech I was talking to gave me a pitying look. She told me that even if they could remove such a large mass, it would return in less than two weeks. The risk and expense of the procedure wouldn’t be worth it because there was no comfort to be gained from yet another surgery. “His cancer is terminal,” she said. “You just need to accept that.”

By now, I think we have all had ample time to acknowledge that this wonderful unexpected period of time beyond the initial three month prognosis is the last that we are going to have with this wonderful little dog. But what absolutely amazes me is that other people have a harder time accepting it than we do.

To be perfectly fair, the vast majority of my friends, both online and in the real world, are wonderful and very sympathetic to our situation. It’s the general public that I can’t stand. Nobody even bothers bringing Pete to the pet stores now, partly because he would be uncomfortable, and partly because of the judgmental looks we get from other people who are a send button away from calling the ASPCA on us.

I attribute this knee-jerk reaction to near-constant barrage of photos of abuse and neglect that rescue groups and animal rights groups alike are particularly fond of distributing. After all, what garners more donations than a photo of poor little Fluffy with a skin condition or a massive conspicuous tumor?

People see these images and automatically assume that neglect was involved. They want to believe the worst of the dog’s owner. The pitchforks come out, the torches are lit, and the witch-hunt begins.

Do cases of abuse and neglect occur that result in the immediate need for advanced medical care? Yes. Are they common? No. Not at all. In fact, when you do hear about extreme cases of animals that have been severely neglect, you are probably only hearing about it because the case is extreme. I have said it before and I will say it again: the vast majority of dogs in the United States (and the world) have wonderful loving owners that care very much for their well being. You hear about the bad cases because they are bad.

So does the tumor on Pete’s neck indicate that he is being neglected? If everything you read on the internet is to be believed, yes. It doesn’t take long to come across an image of a dog with a tumor that was rescued from a shelter, the rescue group claiming abuse, and the accusatory comments from the general public that inevitably follow.

If you take one thing away from this blog post, please take this: an existing medical condition is not always an indication of abuse or neglect.

Many diseases take more than a month of treatment before they go away. And a lot of these diseases appear out of nowhere. Pete’s tumor was completely undetectable until it suddenly wasn’t, and then it was very obvious. Nothing was going to fix his cancer overnight, and as it turns out, nothing will ever fix it. This is the disease that will kill him. But in the meantime, while we have been blessed with months of love and naked-dog snuggles that we couldn’t have even dreamed about having last December, we are giving him the best quality of life we possibly can.

That is all that matters to him and it is all that matters to us.