Secondhand Cigarette Smoke and your Sheltie

Old topic, still a valuable topic - have a long time friend, chain smoker, smokes in the house.

She has lost TWO Shelties to nasal cancer. Yes, they were 10-11 years old, but the littermate to one of them lived for much longer (the other that passed was a singleton).

So, have had/known Shelties that lived to 15/18 years old, 10 or 11 seems young, and nasal cancer was a nasty way to go that involved a lot of blood sprayed all over the house from sneezing dogs.

SO, a vet that would say dogs do not live long enough to die of cancer from second hand smoke would indicate to me that vet was a smoker, lol.

If only one had passed the way, you could hang it on coincidence, but not both of them.

These dog both grew up as puppies, they were a few years apart (5 or so) in age.

Just very sad. Their coats always looked rough and dry also - not hereditary, I knew the breeders of both dogs and the dogs from their kennels. Show dogs, with very beautiful coats (and I had a litter mate to one of them) gorgeous coat that dragged the ground.

No way it was not smoking related that their coats looked so bad. They were clean, but just yucky.
:hide
 
Both of my parents were smokers. My mother had a 4 pack a day habit. She died from complications of throat cancer. All of my foster parents smoked.

None of my siblings or I smoke.

Currently, I am the only resident in the building where I live that doesn't smoke. I hate when I come out into my hall way and I have to hold my breath till I can get to the outside for our Fresh polluted city air.

I have to say, that as a child, I had constant sinus/ cold infections. I sometimes wonder if that didn't contribute to autoimmune bleeding disorder that I have now.

And Beau sneezes ALOT when Both of my neighbors are home, mostly, because their cigarette smoke just envelopes my apartment.:ick
 
I'm not too sure what to think on this score, but it could be that the secondhand smoke, as well as those noxious fumes that are exuded from the furniture and draperies in the house of a heavy smoker, might weaken the dog's immune system, making him more susceptible to diseases of all sorts.
 
This is from the second link posted by Ontario Sheltie. (ETS is environmental tobacco smoke)

"In dogs, ETS is significantly associated with nasal sinus cancer and weakly associated with lung cancer. A study at Colorado State found a higher incidence of nasal cavity tumors in dogs exposed to ETS than in dogs that live in non-smoking households. This higher incidence was specifically found amongst long-nosed breed dogs such as Collies, and there was no significant increase in nasal tumors amongst short- to medium-nosed dogs exposed to ETS."

I have a fair amount of sympathy for smokers. My dad died a horrible lingering death from lung cancer, having started smoking at age 12 and only stopping briefly (3 months) after having a lung removed. His last act before dying, was to turn off the oxygen and have a puff. It is a powerfui addiction, and as I can't seem to find what it takes to lose the extra 30 pounds I am carrying I can't judge someone for not being able to quit smoking. I've personally never smoked, can't stand the smell but I do understand that knowing the long term consequences of a behavior is not necessarily enough to motivate change in the present.

Smokers do not realize just how repugnant that smell is to non-smokers and how far it actually carries. I think there is an amount of denial going on. My sister's best friend is a smoker who swears she only smokes in one room of her house ( the office behind closed doors) - yet my sister cannot spend a night at her house ( the guest room bed clothes & pillow reek), and when the friend's daughter comes to stay with my niece they can smell the smoke in her clothing and her hair, eventhough the mom supposedly does not smoke whenthe kid is in the room. I would imagine it is the same with smokers pets. The only sure fire way to not have second hand smoke in a house and therefore on everything and everyone including the pets (air circulates all over a home) in that house is to smoke only outdoors.

If I were placing a puppy, all things being equal - I would opt for the non-smoking home.
 
Something not mentioned (that I noticed anyway) in this thread is the build-up of tar on the dog's coat. They will ingest that at some point, to some degree, and it is impossible to completely remove that build-up from their coats. Maybe evidence isn't showing strong correlations between pets exposed to second-hand smoke and related disease, but maybe no one is really looking for it yet. Smoke exposure is almost always included as a component in any human research; I don't think it is in animal research.

I have no sympathy for smokers. None. It is a choice to start, it is a choice to stop. An extremely difficult one, obviously, but it is still a choice. My grandfather smoked 4-6 cartons (yes, cartons - not packs) a week for over 50 years. He quit cold turkey. It is doable.

Is it fair for a rescue to refuse to allow a smoking household to adopt a Sheltie? I don't think so, primarily because it is completely up to each rescue to decide their own requirements.
 
getting off topic - but I think that for some smokers choosing to stop smoking is like asking a depressed person to cheer up - it's not that simple.
 
celloyogi said:
Something not mentioned (that I noticed anyway) in this thread is the build-up of tar on the dog's coat. They will ingest that at some point, to some degree, and it is impossible to completely remove that build-up from their coats.
Click to expand...

I wonder how much actual nicotine is involved in that build-up? Nicotine is quite a powerful poison for some animals when absorbed through the skin. Certainly it would affect the cardiovascular system.
 
labgirl said:
Oh and my grandad was a chronic asthma sufferer since childhood and smoked a pipe - go figure:rolleyes2:
Click to expand...

I knew a fellow asthmatic flutist (for reference, the flute takes just as much air capacity as the tuba) who kept his cigarettes in one pocket and his inhaler in the other.

Those who have made a point of the tar and nicotine being stuck in the fur I think are making a very valid one. I was cleaning a cotton-blend uniform that was kept in a household of what we assumed were chain smokers. It took 6 months of laying it in several dozen yards of industrial grade carbon fabric (used for factories which produce strong odors or carcinogenic fumes, also very expensive) to get it so that I wasn't gagging.
 
Yea, I used to smoke. There is nothing like a smoke. I too still like the lighting up smell, but it's down hill all the way after that. I HATE the smell of cigarette smoke. I hate that I wasted my health and my kids' health on smoking. I hate that I wasted all that money on smokes. I hate that I grew up with second hand smoke and smoked and guess what, now I have asthma-duh.

My two dear little boys begged me to quit and I did after smoking for 9 years. Now those two dear little boys are grown up and THEY smoke. Breaks my heart. Now their dear little girls beg them to quit smoking...I pray they do.

If I can quit, anybody can. You just really have to want to do it just like weight loss or drinking or gambling or drugs.

Is all this the business of a Sheltie Rescue ? It's their "game" so to speak. If you want to adopt one of their dogs you have to do it by their rules. To me, this is the same as the fence issue...best case scenario may be a non smoking home with a fence, but sometimes you just have to go with what you've got. Certainly a smoker can give a dog a really great home as well as someone without a fence or someone who maybe feeds a little too many treats or someone who is not able to be home all day with their dog. Certainly this would be better than euthanasia ! Better than never knowing the love of master or never hearing a kind word from their own special person in their own familiar home.

Rescues do incredible things, all for the sake of dogs. They get very little recognition and a lot of aggravation for the satisfaction of having made the difference in the life of a dog. I don't envy them the decisions they have to make concerning adoption.

Now, for someone to seriously say that second hand smoke would not have the same affect on our pets that it has on us, is crazy. :fl
 
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