Is there a doctor..or a dog in the house?
Man’s best friend just got a few more gold stars.
Trained dogs are now sniffing out cancer. And according to a study done by someplace called the Pine Street foundation they are doggone good at it. Like 99% of the time dead on accurate.
Now it’s long been know that doggies have pretty accurate noses. In fact those wet snuffers can sort out a stink of less than a few parts per billion. To put it another way a dog could smell a single grain of salt in a swimming pool. Which begs the question why my dog once ate a skunk but that’s for another time.
So these scientific types captured the breath of a group of people with either lung or Breast cancer and some without, bottled it and let the dogs sniff away. Of course these pooches were trained to recognize what cancer smells like and sit when they did. Time after time the md’s (medical dogs?) sat when they snorted cancer.
Dogs have been used for a long time to ferret out drugs, bombs and even dead people. Now man’s best buddy may help us to live longer. It’s an interesting thought and not a big leap to wonder if the doggies couldn’t be trained to sniff out a few other things.
Could a properly trained dog work at a bank beside a loan officer and sniff out deadbeats? Could we have roving rovers patrol the halls of congress for bribe takers, or maybe let them on the senate floor, trained to bark when they detect a lie?
On second thought that probably wouldn’t be too practical. The dogs would make so much noise you’d never hear anything else.
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