Harness the power of the dog's nose

Looking forward to the APBC Annual Conference tomorrow whic concentrates on this subject.

• Gwen Bailey is opening the Day
• Followed by John Bradshaw talking about the nose
• David Ryan will be discussing police dog scent training for your own dog
• Harold Burrows will be presenting on National Search and Rescue Dogs Associations
• Julie Bedford will introduce how to incorporate nosework in behaviour modification
• Claire Hargrave is chatting about Pheromonotherapy
• Finally Claire Guest is closing with Medical Detection Dogs

I have not finished typing up my notes from last week yet, so I foresee my evenings being very busy...............

I was hoping to go to this, money and other stuff allowing, but have an ankle in full plaster at the moment, so have to miss it.

I know it is right up your street SB
Will be interested to know what you think of it.

IIRC I think it was Clare Guest with the medical detection dogs who gave a talk previously about her work, and people were just gobsmacked at some of the incredible things she was talking about.

Dogs are truly amazing, and especially with what they can do with their noses.

Wys
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Enjoy - and I look forward to the notes!

Am back.

Six speakers, the ones who impressed me most were John and the two Claires.

David Ryan had nothing new to say that those of us who are nosework aficionados did not know already, neither did Julie Bedford and Harold's presentation was not terribly impressive TBH.

I have to admit to changing my views over the use of Adaptil etc in dogs since Claire's brilliant, very scientific, presentation, I have always been extremely sceptical about this area of work, but I am more receptive now.

Although as she herself said, there is still much we do not know.

the use of dogs in cancer and bio detection dogs and medical alert dogs is truly inspiring.

Claire had just returned from Italy and although I was familiar with their use in cancer and seizure/hypo alerts etc I was unaware of their use in Addisons Disease and Narcolepsy.

the most exciting news was that a dog that had been trained ONLY to detect bladder cancer could, without further training, also detect renal and prostate cancer.

This validates the cost effectiveness of using dogs as the reliable use of machines and technicians would need 10 - 20 years to develop the same degree of accuracy.

It was also great to see that some of these dogs were rescue dogs brought in as unmanageable.

I was interested to see so many people I knew from various arenas present. There was a big turnout.

Fortunately the majority of the presentation was given to us in handouts so no need for the massive notes I made the week before although I still made quite a few!

Thanks for the summary Smokey.

Do they know how the dogs detect the cancers? Are there certain proteins or bacteria the dog picks up on?

Also, was the conference filmed? Are the talks up online anywhere?

VOCs

Volatile organic compounds , what is interesting is that dogs can detect the existence of simple tumours by BREATH and this is NOT as some would believe, because the disease has become so advanced that it is systemic and so has a strong odour (advanced cancer patients do appear to have a strong odour as their relatives, doctors and nurses will attest to).

The other interesting information was that THOUSANDS of samples are needed because dogs are SO clever that they take short cuts and RECOGNISE samples which have been rewarded!

Mind boggling!

That is incredible, we know so little yet, I am sure there is so much more to come in this area yet

Wys
x

wow, bet you were glued to your seat! It really is amazing how dogs work.....and we can be so blind to it at times, imagine what we might learn about this in 20 years time, or should I say what they (dogs) might teach us..