Dogs Can Smell Cancer

Previous reports have suggested that dogs can detect skin, bladder, lung, breast, and ovarian cancers by scent. Now, using an 8-year-old female black Labrador Retriever from the St. Sugar Cancer Sniffing Dog Training Center in Chiba, Japan, researchers have evaluated a dog's ability to detect colorectal cancer (CRC).

Initially trained for water rescue, the dog began training for cancer detection in 2005, using breath samples from several hundred cancer patients and about 500 healthy volunteers. Each training session was complete when the dog could distinguish between samples from a cancer patient and four controls consecutively in dozens of trials. Correct sample identification was rewarded by play with a tennis ball. Before the present stud…