(Photo courtesy of Colorado State University)

Nicole Ehrhart (center), Dr. Anna Conti (left) and student Kelsey Parrish with Conti’s Basset hound, Picasso, who had surgery for cancer.

There may be more potential to find new treatments for different types of cancer in our four-legged friends than in lab mice and rats.

That’s something Nicole Ehrhart studies.

Ehrhart is a professor of surgical oncology at Colorado State University, and she looks at how to best use the similarities between dogs and people to treat diseases like cancer.