In fact, the dog even attempted to bite off the offending mole when she was wearing shorts. The woman consulted her doctor and the mole was excised. Cognetta decided to conduct his own experiment. He wanted to determine if malignant melanomas emit unique odors that cannot be detected by humans, but can be recognized by dogs with their well-developed rhinecephalon. A dog's nose has about 220 million cells associated with the sense of smell.
Humans have a mere five million.
So he enlisted the support of Duane Pickel who had worked with dogs for 30 years. Picket had trained dogs to find anything from land mines in Vietnam to drugs and smuggled wildlife. The doctor obtained tissue samples from melanomas from two re search institutes and the Tallahassee Memorial Regional Medical Center prodded equipment to preserve the delicate tissue. George was then trained to find the tube containing melanoma samples. Kim Edwards, a nurse at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, agreed to join the study.