•Animals have been known to help people in hospitals, schools, and fire and police departments. Annie is unique as she helps other animals calm their nerves for Jackson County Animal Control Officer Shawn Lutz.
“What she does is she helps me catch dogs that are scared of people who have been running for a while,” said Lutz. “She is a confident dog; she goes out, and she befriends them and brings them back to me so I can get them caught and off the street.”
Since 2020, Annie has been a ride-along partner for Lutz and a family pet. Lutz said Annie has helped retrieve over 70 dogs.
“The biggest thing is, every morning, my wife says make sure Annie comes home. I am assuming she wants me home as well,” said Lutz.
The bond between Annie and Lutz is special, and he said he could not imagine working without his partner by his side.
“She talks to me, we interact all day long, we really kind of read each other, I look out for her, and she looks out for me,” said Lutz. “It would be very awkward to not have her with me on a regular basis working the road.”
Annie is a big celebrity around town and at public events, but Officer Lutz said he still worries about her whenever she is called upon to work.
“I get nervous every single time,” said Lutz. “She has had a couple of times where she has been nipped over the years doing this job. I worry every single time she gets out of the truck, and she is working with me and helping me that she is going to have a negative encounter.”
As for Annie, she is just happy to be working alongside her best friend.
•Breakthrough Cancer Vaccine For Dogs Is ‘Truly Revolutionary’, Scientist Says
HEALTH By David Nield
A recently developed cancer vaccine for dogs is showing promising results in clinical trials, which have been running since 2016, and there’s hope that some of the benefits of the vaccine could be translated into human cancer treatments.
More than 300 dogs have been treated with the vaccine to date, and the twelve–month survival rate for canines with certain cancers has been lifted from about 35 percent to 60 percent. Tumors in many of the animals have also shrunk.
Known officially as the Canine EGFR/HER2 Peptide Cancer Immunotherapeutic, the treatment grew out of studies of autoimmune diseases, where the immune system damages the body’s own tissue rather than any invading threats. The vaccine is designed to get the immune system to attack cancer instead.
“In many ways tumors are like the targets of autoimmune diseases,” says rheumatologist Mark Mamula, from the Yale University School of Medicine.
“Cancer cells are your own tissue and are attacked by the immune system. The difference is we want the immune system to attack a tumor.”
Regression of lung metastases in a canine patient. Chest X-rays were taken three months apart. (Doyle et al., Translational Oncology, 2021)
As outlined in a 2021 study by Mamula and colleagues, the treatment gets the immune cells to produce antibody defenses, which attach themselves to tumors and interfere with their growth patterns.
Specifically, these antibodies hunt down two proteins: epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). Mutations causing overexpression of these proteins drive uncontrolled cell division in some human and canine cancers.
Existing treatments targeting EGFR and HER2 call upon just one kind of antibody. The new vaccine boosts its effects by creating a polyclonal response – one that involves antibodies from multiple immune cells, rather than a single one, making it harder for the cancer to become resistant to the drug.
“In veterinary oncology, our toolbox is much smaller than that of human oncology,” says veterinary oncologist Gerry Post, from the Yale School of Medicine. “This vaccine is truly revolutionary. I couldn’t be more excited to be a veterinary oncologist.”
For now, the vaccine remains a post-diagnosis treatment option rather than any preventative measure, but it’s already helped dogs like Hunter: he’s now cancer-free, two years after being diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer.
Typically, only about 30 percent of dogs with osteosarcoma will survive beyond twelve months. Around one in four dogs will get cancer during their lifetimes, so the potential impact of the treatment is huge.
Considering the similarities between dog cancer and human cancer, from genetic mutations and tumor behavior to treatment responses, the researchers suggest the vaccine will also help our understanding of cancers in humans.
The Yale University team isn’t the only ones making progress with canine cancer treatments, either. Researchers are also trialing various immunotherapies for dogs with melanoma and lymphoma. However, as with human cancers, not all dogs respond to treatment, and it’s difficult to predict which ones do.
“Dogs, just like humans, get cancer spontaneously,” says Mamula. “They grow and metastasize and mutate, just like human cancers do.”
“If we can provide some benefit, some relief – a pain-free life – that is the best outcome that we could ever have.”
The research has been published in Translational Oncology.
