Tuesday, June 11, 2002

Dogs Are So Kewl...

My Ninja is the best little beastie in the world.

Its true.

No one can snuggle, kill the Kong toy, protect the house against evil-doers or ride co-pilot in the del sol like he can.

I don't write this high praise lightly.

I've had lots of dogs and am totally a dog person and Ninja-bear is hands down the best one ever.

He is my number one little manlette.

To meet him is to join the fan club.

Not bad for an 18 pound refugee from the miniature schnauzer rescue.

On the ABC site today is a very interesting dog article.

Turns out dogs can smell cancer.

Brit scientists are training them to detect prostate cancer in human urine samples as a quicker, cheaper early warning test.

The cases that suggested this might be possible are worth a read:

As detailed in the British medical journal The Lancet in 1989, a border collie-Doberman mix belonging to a British woman repeatedly sniffed a mole on its owner's thigh and once even tried to bite it off. The constant attention prompted the woman to have the lesion examined and she learned it was a malignant melanoma.

"The dog may have saved her life by forcing her to seek medical advice while the mole was still at a thin stage," wrote Hywell Williams and Andrew Pembroke, surgeons at the dermatology department at King's College Hospital in London, in a letter to The Lancet.

In another case, a pet Labrador named Parker repeatedly pushed his nose against his 66-year-old owner's leg, sniffing a lesion through the owner's pants. When the man had the lesion examined, he learned it was a basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer, and had it removed.

Neither dogs showed any interest in their owners' lesions after they were treated.

After seeing the Lancet report, Armand Cognetta, a dermatologist at a clinic in Tallahassee, Fla., began collaborating with a police dog handler to train dogs to locate and retrieve tissue samples of melanoma that had been removed and stored in bottles. When the dog, George, proved 100 percent successful in detecting melanoma samples in tests, Cognetta had it smell suspect areas on his patients' skin. He reported the dog was nearly 100 percent successful in detecting cancerous skin lesions in patients.

For more on Dr. Cognetta and George -- who is also a Schnauzer, click here, here, and here.

The third link is to Cognetta's article detailing the trials, research methods and results. It's very well written.

Again, dogs are so kewl.

posted by Bohica at 10:35 AM