TikTok creator @sweetteatate is using her platform to share with viewers what she believes to have been a sign of cancer in her dog, Barley, in the hope that it might alert other dog owners
However, the behavior @sweetteatate sites as concerning is fairly typical, nearly universal—stretching, also known as bowing. There is limited information available online to suggest that this behavior is a sign of cancer, however, it can be a sign of abdominal pain if the behavior is atypical of the animal.
She says it was the first sign, followed by others including the appearance of lumps and weightless that culminated in a stage five lymphoma diagnosis in March.
@sweetteatate Reply to @menjacho1738 ♬ original sound – Tea
Many commenters were confused by her warning, writing in her comment section that this is a normal behavior for most of the dogs they’ve encountered.
“That’s called a big stretch and you give them scritchy scratchies afterwords,” one commenter wrote.
“How does this make any sense?” another commenter wrote. “My dog does this everyday when he stretches.”
“My dog does this every morning when he gets up before he goes outside,” a commenter wrote. “There’s nothing wrong with my baby.”
Other commenters shared that their dogs had displayed similar behavior before a vet determined that they were in extreme stages of illness.
“My dog would just sit like this for minutes at a time,” one commenter wrote. “I wish I would have known she died of kidney failure/cancer we were too late miss her everyday.”
“Yes! My dog did this repeatedly and was not happy—had (an) infected gallbladder,” a commenter wrote. “Needed emergency surgery.”
“My dog does this whenever he has a stomach ache,” another commenter wrote. “When he had stomach disease he did this 24/7 you will know if it feels off with (your) dog.”
@sweetteatate said in a follow-up video that when her dog started doing this “out of nowhere,” she became concerned but initially brushed it off.
“I started Googling and asking around, really it just said that it was a playful thing or that he was stretching and I knew that that wasn’t true,” she says. “I kind of ended up brushing it off because nothing else was really happening and he seemed fine, but then he started to become low-energy. He wasn’t lethargic at that point but I could tell he wasn’t being himself and I thought that that position that he was doing was trying to tell me something.”
She says she shared Barley’s symptoms with his vet, and was told to seek out more immediate care, but he was cleared by that new vet. Months later, @sweetteatate learned he had Lymphoma.
The Daily Dot has reached out to @sweetteatate via Instagram DM regarding the video.
