Hi wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience? Both my male dogs seem to be reacting to other dogs cancers. Doug my old dog has done it for years he picks it up often before the dog has been diagnosed and its a very different type of interest to anything I've seen him do before. It has happened too much to be a coincidence. I can tell what it is and what the dog has from his behaviour. He reacted similarly to my dads cancer and wsa very interested in the area where it was in his body. I thought it was just doug but now Rory does it too. He does not walk with Doug as Doug is too old to go far now, so it's not a learned thing. He had this same intense reaction to a dog. I had to put him on his lead and take him away. Everytime we saw this dog I had to put him on his lead as he would follow it. A very close friend asked about this as Rory is very good and always comes when called. I told I think that dog has cancer and Rory can smell it, she knows me very well and believed me and i found out this weekend that the dog has now been diagnosed with cancer. It was 2 months ago when he first became attracted to this dog. I know that dogs are used in human cancer detection and that some cancers can give off interesting smells Has anyone else had anything like this happen? Hard subject I know but I'm just interested to find out more if possible.
Yes, a couple of friends of ours had an old Lab with testicular cancer. They live quite a long way out of the village. Other friends have (had, until very recently ) an old, grumpy, terrier-type cross who wasn't interested in other dogs in the slightest. Until Harvey got his cancer, and then Charlie started running off on walks (this, from a dog that barely ran anywhere), the kilometre or so to Harvey's house, to sit outside the door and whine until he could be with Harv. Harvey had his bits removed, taking the cancer with it, and Charlie didn't bother with him again. I saw a show on cancer detection dogs a few weeks back. The dogs were trained to detect the cancers in a sample of cells, but not in people. They said the dogs wouldn't react to cancer in people, because they hadn't been trained to do so. I guess there are ethical issues there; you don't want to be walking down the street and have your dog telling you someone has cancer. They're currently trying to build a mechanical nose to do the same detection, but they don't really know what it is that the dogs are smelling, so they are nowhere near cracking it yet, whereas dogs are so efficient at it, and relatively easy to train.
I have read and seen a lot about cancer detection dogs here, but like snowbunny says, they are trained to detect it in cell samples. I did see a program about various medical assistance dogs (eg diabetes, epilepsy) and there was a woman on it whose dog started behaving strangely towards her. Turned out she had breast cancer. After it was removed, the dog reverted to its normal behaviour. So much we still have to learn about what our dogs are capable of.
I listened to a great program on radio 4 a while ago with the woman who was running the trials with dogs smelling urine to try to detect different types of cancers and some of the dogs were showing positive reactions to some sames they thought were normal but when they tested the urine again with more sensitive equipement the dogs were proved to be correct. It was a great interview. Her own dog detected her breast cancer and when it did the doctor told her the tumor was in such a deep part of her breast if the dog had not detected it when it did she would have been in real trouble. Her dog had repeatley bumped ths spot and brusied her which had led her to speak to her doctor. I recently had septaciamia due to my own cancer and Rory would not stop licking one side of my face. When I finally got admitted to hospital after me trying to ignore what was going on he was proved to be actually pin pointing the spot of my deep jaw infection. He bumped it so hard sometimes with his nose it hurt. He really did not like it. I was suprised by this he really is a silly young thing I just must listen to him in the future. sx
