ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION The most common oral malignancy in dogs is melanoma ( 1 – 4 ). Oral melanoma is most commonly diagnosed in Scottish terriers, golden retrievers, poodles, and dachshunds ( 2 , 5 ). Oral melanoma is primarily a disease of older dogs without gender predilection, but may be seen in younger dogs ( 5 – 7 ). Melanomas in dogs have extremely diverse biologic behaviors depending on a large variety of factors. A greater understanding of these factors signifi cantly helps the clinician to delineate in advance the appropriate staging, prognosis, and treatments. The primary factors which determine the biologic behavior of an oral melanoma in a dog are site, size, stage, and histologic parameters ( 5 – 9 ). Unfortunately, even with a comprehensive understanding of all of these factors, there are melanomas which have an unreliable biologic behavior; hence the need for additional research into this relatively common, heterogeneous, but a frequently extremely malignant tumor. Molecular biological aspects of canine melanoma have been previously reviewed ( 10 , 11 ).
