Your dog can save your life!

Wow!Really?I guess it won't be long when a rechnological device from this concept would be developed. It could really give major help to revolutionized the science of medicine. Perhaps in the near future diseases will be rare and lifespan could be extended through healthy living. I believe in the saying "Prevention is better than cure", and I find this study to be one of those that can support this belief.

Yes I have read stories about a persons dog acting strange with the master all to find out tha they had cancer and so they say thier dog found it fist and saved their lives!

I'd heard something about this but I had no idea the success rate was so high! I think everyone who CAN should have a dog. I remember seeing on one of the TV magazine shows like 60 Minutes or Dateline about a woman who had epilepsy or some other condition that caused her to have seizures whose dog literally saved her life. It was a large dog, I'm thinking it was a Rotweiller (sp); the woman went to get up from her couch and the dog suddenly leaped up and got underneath her as she started to fall from a seizure. She would have likely hit her head on a very hard, sharp table had the dog not broken her fall. I can't remember all the details anymore but apparently they did some studies after that and discovered dogs can somehow sense when someone is about to have a seizure and it's their instinct to save their "best friend". Annie

Hi Hatley! Dogs have been known to smell cancer from the different containers and actually pick the right container that it was put in however, I've never heard of a dog smelling someone's breath and detecting cancer.... WAY COOL!! That's really awesome! And they say dogs are stupid.... Train them and they wouldn't be! lol Thanks for sharing this with us!! Really cool!!

I had heard something about this, but I hadn't really read too much about it. Reminds me of certain people that can detect diseases because they have a particular "smell" on the person that's affected by them. I think it all sounds really neat and hopefully will lead to earlier detection and better methods in helping people with these illnesses. Hopefully there'll be a lower mortality rate because of it, too. ^_^ I wish that my dogs were this handy, though. They're both kind of dumb. Cute and quite entertaining, but they're not really good for anything more than companions, which is ok because that's all we expected out of them.

I have heard of this and what a dog's nose can discern is absolutely astounding. It's hard to fathom the sensitivity level we're talking about here. Dogs are truly amazing. A while back, I saw a special report about this on TV which showed them doing experiments and training the dogs to alert on the scent. This is relatively new to everyone involved, I mean really groundbreaking research and the people that were training the dogs had bowls set down with the cancer scent in the one bowl and it showed the dog alerting to it every time he would get near it. They were having trouble with one dog however, who kept alerting not at the bowl, but kept going over to one of the trainers and showing the alert signal. They thought the dog was not getting it and were going to give up and take him out of the program. As it turned out though, when the trainer went in for a routine check and blood tests, it was discovered that he had the very early stages of cancer. The dog was ignoring the "non-living" training scent and alerting to the live person with the life threatening disease. Needless to say, that dog stayed in the program and was put to the head of the class so to speak. Once they learn more about this and it's perfected, it could be a huge breakthrough for diagnosing this disease in it's early stages when treatment could be a lot more effective. Many lives could be saved and who knows, dogs might be able to sniff out many other types of diseases, not just cancer. Man's best friend might just be more of a friend than anybody ever thought.

No I certainly was not aware of this at all I have to say that is amazing

I have read about this type of thing for several years now. I guess they are now coming up with the proof to go with it. It is also proven that dogs can be trained as assistance dogs for people with severe seizures. They again detect a chemical change that means that a seizure is about to happen. There are a lot of things that we can do that do not have to be machines and pills. It is much nicer to have a dog that will help you stay healthy.

I am not the least surprised. Many people have underestimated the asset that animals are to mankind. We have alot more to learn then they do. Great discussion by the way!

I had heard of that happening before but didn't know it had been researched. I read recently about a cat in a nursing home that lays on the beds of those who are in their final day or hours, that was in Reader's Digest. Animals are very sensitive, physically and instinctively.

I didn't know this but have passed the info along to a friend whose wife was diagnosed with lung cancer and was in remission and now has more nodules on her lungs. Thanks and take care.