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To study cures for cancer you need to induce the exact type of cancer you are trying to treat in dozens of identical animals that are as similar as possible to humans, and do so in a reproducible way. suggesting you could just go and work with any old animal that happens to have some sort of cancer is incredibly naive.

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Who mentioned humans?

You were vague, so readers used the most probable parse: that the dogs were used for human-medical research.

Anyway, pet owners aren't lining up to volunteer their pets for experimental treatments, so researching dog cancer on random sick dogs isn't a great model either.

Some subset of owners of sick pets DO enroll pets in experimental treatments, which i know from a life among animals. In a personal case, the results amazed the oncologists.

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