Dog The Bounty Hunter’s Moving Update on Wife’s Cancer Battle: ‘You Can’t Admit Defeat’

Getty Images | Frazer Harrison

“I told her the other day,“ Duane ”Dog” Chapman began, “I love you so much I’m not gonna let you die.”

Duane and his wife, Beth, 51, recently learned that Beth is battling cancer for the second time after remission from throat cancer in 2017. Just one year after Beth’s initial recovery, the diagnosis returned, and this time it’s devastating: stage four lung cancer.

Duane explained the frightening realization to Daily Mail. “Half of her lung was full of water,” he said, going on to describe how a shocking 5 ounces (approx. 148 milliliters) of fluid was drained from Beth’s lung after she was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital in December 2018.

But the couple, stoic as ever, aren’t giving up easily.

Duane, 66, released a moving video update to Daily Mail, discussing his wife’s health and his determination to keep on keeping on in the face of Beth’s prognosis. “I stay positive,” he shared, “and, you know, you can’t admit defeat, you just cannot. I have to stay strong.”

Beth is receiving treatment in the form of chemotherapy. However, according to her husband, she has refused additional prescription medication, wanting to explore alternative options. But there’s a second reason for their fight: the 12-years-married couple wish to continue filming for their new show, Dog’s Most Wanted.

After the eight-season success of reality TV show Dog the Bounty Hunter, filmed between Duane’s native Hawaii and Colorado, spinoff series Dog and Beth: On the Hunt hit screens in 2013. And now, along with their son Leland, the family are pouring everything they’ve got into their latest venture Dog’s Most Wanted, which premieres in May.

“We’re all together, a team, the family out there, we don’t think about nothin’ but that,” Duane shared. The family are collectively determined to stay positive.

And it seems that brave Beth has opened up to her husband to reinforce her own priorities during this troubling time, too. “She has told me repeatedly that if these are her last days on earth she wants to spend every moment with me on the hunt,“ Duane continued, in his heartfelt message, ”living life to the fullest and enjoying the time we have left together.”

The self-proclaimed “leader of the family” (not before admitting that Beth “thinks she is, but I am”) feels that it’s his responsibility to eradicate all doubt from the minds of the whole family in their battle against the odds. But feelings always sneak in sideways, and Duane, despite his stoic approach, can’t help but admit his very real fears.

Speaking to InTouch Weekly in December of 2018, Duane revealed his vulnerabilities. “I love my honey so much,” the distraught husband shared. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do ... I cry all the time.”

Duane is keeping himself busy. He is partnering with addiction experts at Boca Raton, Florida-based Treatment Alternatives, to pioneer a rehab program he likes to call ''Naked, Addicted and Afraid,” for the people he has caught. Currently, around half of all federal prisoners are sent to prison for their offenses, but Duane wants to pilot a workable, practical alternative.

He intends to take it nationwide.

We wish all the courage and strength in the world to “Dog” and his powerhouse wife. They have everything in the world to pull through for!