MAN'S BEST FRIEND.... WOMAN'S TOO
BY DAN MILLER
(originally posted September 28, 2004)
My daughter Darcy called to let us know she adopted a dog from the Nashville Humane Association, or as my younger daughter calls it, the Who-Man Association.
So we're excited about welcoming "Archie" to the family.
And that got me thinking about dogs.
We know they have a remarkable sense of smell..... possibly 100,000 times more powerful than humans.
That might explain why dogs like to stick their heads out of car windows. It's not the breeze they relish... it's the quickly changing potpourri of smells.
Dogs enjoy them all. I'm usually limited to the occasional dead skunk, or exhaust fumes from the bus in front of me.
My wife Karen is 100% certain that our 15-year old black lab Pippa knew we were going to have a baby before we even had a clue.
The old dog (who's no longer with us) would lay her head on Karen's lap, sniff at her tummy, and make unusual little sounds.
A couple of weeks later, an obstetrician confirmed the dog's diagnosis.
Last week on our newscasts, we reported on a remarkable study outlined in the British Medical Journal that demonstrated how dogs..... with no special training.... could detect cancer in the urine of test subjects at a rate three times higher than random selecting.
A doctor at Cambridge University in England said it's plausible because people with cancer shed abnormal proteins in their urine.
And it's not a new idea. Two London dermatologists suspected the same thing 15 years ago, after a woman's collie-doberman mix constantly sniffed a mole on a woman's leg and even tried to bite it off.
The doctors checked it and found it was a malignant melanoma. They caught it early enough to save the woman's life.
But there's something we didn't report about the study in England..... and it's intriguing. Here's the rest of the story.
One of the people used in the dog research was tested beforehand, and deemed 'cancer free'.
That patient's cancer-free urine would be used for comparison purposes.
But all the dogs, without exception, identified that participant's urine as a cancer case.
The doctors assumed the dogs had failed that part of the test.
But more tests were conducted, and - amazingly - that person was found to have a life-threatening kidney tumor. All the lab work had missed it.
I get the feeling dogs might turn out to be even better friends than we imagined.
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