Originally published June 18, 2014 at 4:37 PM | Page modified June 19, 2014 at 8:32 PM

BELLINGHAM A decade ago, the San Juan Island owners of Comet brought their beloved golden retriever to Drs. Edmund Sullivan and Theresa Westfall at Bellingham Veterinary to see if Comets diagnosis of lymphoma could be treated as something other than a death sentence.

The odds werent good.

At the time, lymphoma was considered incurable, with chemotherapy treatment only a temporary solution because the cancer nearly always re-emerged and resulted in death within a year.

Sullivan and Westfall, who are married, were determined to help. After talking to Dr. Rainer Storb, an expert on human lymphoma at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, they decided to attempt a bone-marrow transplant on Comet. They spent six months visiting the center to learn how.

After removing and preserving bone-marrow stem cells in a painless procedure, the cells are stored for re-injection after radiation therapy. Through DNA analysis, the patients cells are checked for the presence of tumor cells. Sometimes, blood transfusions are needed to provide platelets and red blood cells during recovery.

Its a common procedure in humans but hadnt been tried with dogs.

It worked. Comet survived.

Since Comets recovery, more than 100 dogs have been cured with the treatment through Bellingham Veterinary, and three more veterinary hospitals around the country have been trained in the procedure. The 50 percent cure rate is considered extraordinary.

I didnt invent the procedure, Sullivan says. The knowledge was already out there and we just applied it to dogs.

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Lesson learned at Hutch helping dogs with lymphoma