Cancer-Sniffing Dogs

The BBC News had a report yesterday on cancer-sniffing dogs. They are trained to smell cancer on people’s breath. Which is pretty amazing.

The dogs are able to detect compounds present in the breath. They’ve been trained to detect prostate and bladder cancers; breast cancer seems to be their latest discovery.

This is all very early, of course, and much wider testing will have to be done eventually. The hope is that an “electronic nose” can be developed that will serve as an early detection device (though I say just keep using the dogs, which provide some stress relief along with the cancer detection — a nice bonus).

As you may know, one of the first cancer-sniffing dogs was George, a standard schnauzer.

As you may also know, I have a standard schnauzer named Strudel. 

Strudel is not a cancer-sniffing dog. I know this because I was diagnosed with Follicular Lymphoma a year after we got her. Not only did she give me no warning then, but she seems to take no notice of my cancer now.

Here’s Strudel on Valentine’s Day. Is she sniffing cancer? No. She is asking if she can play ball, even though there is three feet of snow on the ground.

And here’s Strudel playing with a rubber bone. Maybe she’s in training to sniff out bone cancer?
 Ha.

And here she is on her birthday. Is she sniffing cancer? No. She is sniffing birthday cake and ignoring everything else. Because she’s like that.

So, as cool as it would be to have a cancer-sniffing dog like George the Standard Schnauzer, I have Strudel, who does lots of thing beside sniffing cancer.

I know what you’re thinking — She must be really good at stress relief, huh?

Hmmm.