We remember the coincidences that fit, and don't remember the thousands of others that didn't. But for Gould, Pennington, Kaufman, Blanco, and Mell, these coincidences are too many to be ignored. I think all they want in life is just to be there for you, to help in whatever way they can. With specialized training, some canines appeared able to accurately spot skin and other cancers in humans, even when conventional medical efforts could not, thanks most likely to their amazing sense of smell. And a dog's ability to diagnose doesn't stop there.
Some dogs seem to be able to alert their owners to the onset of epileptic seizures.
We don't know exactly what it is that the dog is responding to, but we think it's some change in the person's body chemistry that the dog picks up through its sense of smell. It should come as no surprise that dogs can be trained to detect disease through scent, says Duane Pickel, the Tallahassee, Florida-based trainer of two of the dogs used in Cognetta's study. Don't expect to see a white-jacketed pooch at your doctor's anytime soon. It simply would not be cost-effective to have dogs sniffing people for cancer in a doctor's office. But if we can find out what it is that the dog's calling cancer, then we can build a machine that can do the same thing.