[en] One American woman in nine will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. This somber statistic translates into 182,000 new diagnoses and 46,000 deaths per year. Efforts to decrease breast cancer mortality have focused on early detection and improved treatment. Such efforts would be facilitated by the identification of individuals predisposed to the disease. A family history of the disease can increase a woman's risk for developing breast cancer by two- to six-fold. Inheritance of this disease is consistent with at least one susceptibility locus on chromosome 17 (17q12-21) with incomplete penetrance. However, other mechanisms of inherited susceptibility also contribute to the high incidence of the disease. The purpose of the present study was to characterize familial pattern of mammary cancer development in the dog colony. In addition, the expression of the p53 tumor supressor gene and c-erbB2 (p185^erbB2) oncogene proteins, which are frequently altered in human breast cancer, were examined in dogs susceptible and resistant to mammary cancer