A GIF Guide to How Smoking Is Putting Your Pet's Life in Danger

Image via Angelina Dreem

Image via Angelina Dreem

If you smoke around your dog, cat, or other pet, every time they clean themselves, they ingest the residual tobacco dust. That builds up in their body and causes cancer.

Dogs and cats literally sniff up cigarette ash, chemical microdust, and residue from any ground surface. Long-term exposure to cigarette smoke causes nose cancer in dogs. Cancer is no joke… Cigarettes are designed to be addictive, and dogs are taught to sniff out trouble. Maybe there's something Lassie wants to tell you?

What fun will you be when you can barely keep up? Smoking cigarettes leads to shortness of breath and lung cancer, cutting time off those much-needed dog runs pretty quickly.

Why would you want to waste one of your cat’s nine lives by smoking inside? Cats that live with people who smoke more than a pack of cigarettes per day have three times the risk of developing lymphoma—a cancer that affects their immune system.

You could be cutting your parakeet’s pop career short by smoking in the house. Their little lungs are susceptible to the noxious fumes that contain over 7,000 chemicals, causing cancer and other respiratory failures.

Cigarettes are manufactured to get you addicted, just like a puggle (a combination of a pug and beagle). Only cigarettes are much more menacing. Cigarettes contain tobacco that companies design to have addictive additives. Wisconsin breeder Wallace Havens bred the first puggle in the 1980s to be the perfect adorable pup with a natural inclination to cuddle and a squishy face. With its short nose, it is that much more susceptible to the cancerous effects of secondhand smoke.

Every cigarette you smoke can reduce your life by 11 minutes, which means less play time with your four-leggéd best friend.

Short- and medium-nosed breeds, like pugs, bulldogs, beagles, and Brittany spaniels, also have a high risk of lung cancer. Why? Their noses are much shorter, fewer tobacco smoke particles get filtered out, and more go directly into the lungs.

When cats groom themselves, they ingest thirdhand smoke particles that fall onto their fur. Cats that live in smoking homes face three times the risk of developing oral cancer. The cancer is often found under the base of their tongue, where the thirdhand smoke particles tend to collect after grooming.

When you smoke, it also affects your loved ones. Pets depend on us to take care of them, and they repay us with their unconditional love. Please note that smoking is harmful to their health. Make the right decision: Live smoke-free.