The humble dog (canine supersenses) - man's best 'equipped' friend...

I read this article in the Times newspaper today and found it pretty amazing.

Anyway - here's a link to the same article.....

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/l...cle7012560.ece

an extract.....

Might dogs be able to detect chemicals indicating disease? Researchers have begun training dogs to recognise the chemical smells produced by cancerous tissues.In their first trial, using urine and breath samples, the number of trained dogs was small but the results were big: the dogs could detect which patients had cancer. In one study, they missed on only 14 out of 1,272 attempts. Trained dogs can detect cancers of the skin, breast, bladder and lungs at high rates.

There was a fascinating documentary done on this a couple of years ago (I think it may have been done by Jemima Harrison, she of Pedigree Dosg Exposed fame..)
It was amazing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documen...l-cancer.shtml

i read something similar to that a while back, it is amazing. dogs are such extraodinary animals

I remember seeing a documentary, not only dogs here, but in other countries too. They were working on getting the success rates up to a consistent level. Pretty amazing stuff

They are amazing it's true, personally I think it's because all dogs have a sense of smell at leat 1000 times greater than humans. Can you imagine what the world would seem like if you could smell every tiny whiff of whatever from close by or miles away.

Some dogs sense of smell is even greater, the blood hound has the best of all but I can't remember what number of times greater than ours.

cash our rescue rottie wouldnt take her nose away from dougies tumour when he had it. It was very off putting given where his tumour was.

LOL, bless him though, clever Cash!

Phil, this is some of the work my organisation are involved in. We work very closely with a number of organisations who are training dogs to not only detect cancer cells but can be life saving companions for people with diabetes and even Addisons (research currently under way).

Have a look at Cancer Dogs website. We re-homed Casper, a GORGEOUS little springer boy there and he is living the life of Riley training to be a cancer detection dog.

Oh and thanks for the tip off about the article, have sent to my work address to add to our library ;o)