A woman named Betsy was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was the wife of a politician named Duncan Smith. Since Betsy has been diagnosed, Smith has been very active in his support for cancer research.
One charity in particular that he strongly supported was Medical Detection Dogs. What this group does is train dogs to detect cancer in people.
The trainer manager, Rob Harris, explained how it works. Urine samples are collected. The trained dogs can detect which urine has belonged to the person with cancer. Harris even showed Smith one of their dogs in action.
There were eight urine samples, and seven of those were from healthy humans. One of which came from someone with prostate cancer. Amazingly, the dog was able to pinpoint the urine sample that belonged to the cancer patient.
What these dogs can do is remarkable. It is also very significant because this means that cancer can be detected in its early stages. This increases the person’s chance to get medical help as soon as possible. Duncan Smith wants to get the word out that these dogs exist and what they do is essential.
He wants to be one of the people who would spread awareness about it. He knows how important it is to detect cancer early on. Another person who wants to spread awareness is Dr. Claire Guest. This doctor’s interest in the program started when her dog alerted her of her condition.
Her dog, Daisy, nudged her chest and gave her a worried look. This made Dr. Guest investigated further and found that she had a lump on her breast. She was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was fortunate that it was detected very early on.
There were a lot of people like Dr. Guest who have benefited from this special dog skill. Together with Smith, she hoped that a lot more people would support this type of dog training.
Source BBC News via YouTube