Meet The Medics With Furry Coats

How one charity is training dogs to detect medical conditions, including cancer and assist those living with serious illnesses

- Katharine Wootton

It was going to be just an ordinary dog walk one sunny August day when Claire Guest’s Labrador Daisy suddenly started acting strangely. “She just wouldn’t get out of the boot and instead kept staring at me and nudging my chest. It was really odd, but when she eventually stopped I felt where she’d been nudging and noticed a lump in my chest.”

Tests revealed Daisy had been nudging a tumour that Claire hadn’t even noticed. But thanks to her, Claire immediately sought early treatment and eventually made a full recovery. “I was five years away from my first routine mammogram. If Daisy hadn’t picked up on the cancer, I wouldn’t have discovered the lump so early. She absolutely saved my life.”

Coincidentally, at the time, Claire, a behavioural psychologist, was already training dogs to detect cancer. However she never thought her own life would be saved by her own dog’s genius detective skills.

Since that experience Claire has set up the charity Medical Detection Dogs, training dogs to sniff out many different kinds of medical conditions. “What we’ve discovered is that every disease gives off its own signature smell in our body. While we can’t notice this, dogs can – they have a fantastic nose, with 300 million sensory receptors whereas humans have only five million.”