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Cancer and Bio-Detection Dogs centre, training dogs to detect disease
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About twenty people crowded into the small building of the Cancer and Bio-Detection Dogs to listen to tall, dark-haired Claire Guest, director of training, explain the history of the centre. It started when a retired orthopeadic surgeon, Mr. John Church, said in a radio interview in 2002 that he wondered if the remarkable nose of a dog could be used to detect skin cancer.
At the time, Claire was training hearing dogs to assist the deaf. But the idea of dogs detecting cancer had occurred to her, too, because she knew that a friend’s Border Collie had detected it in a mole that dermatologists said was non-cancerous. When a doctor finally agreed to biopsy the small spot, it turned out the dog’s concern had been well-founded. It was a malignant melanoma that, left untreated, could have quickly become deadly. Claire realized that the dog, Trudy, had saved her friend’s life.
Claire and Dr. Church came up with a research study. Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust decided to support them. Together with other experts, they designed and carried out the first scientifically accepted study that proved that dogs could be trained to detect bladder cancer from human urine samples. The results of this groundbreaking study were published in the British Medical Journal in September 2004.
Even more proof is needed to convince the medical establishment that the dogs’ results are reliable, so these studies are ongoing at the Bio-Detection Dogs centre. We watched as Jake the working Springer Spaniel and Daisy the Golden Retriever identified cancerous odours for the trainers.
At the same time, Claire Guest has trained Britain’s first hypoglycaemic detection dog to alert a diabetic of dangerously low blood sugar levels. Zeta, a black Lab, jumps across Dr. Cherry Kearton’s lap when she senses an impending episode. Dr. Kearton, a lecturer at Durham University, has type 1 diabetes with low hypoglycaemic symptoms. He is unaware of any risk until it’s too late, when he collapses into unconsciousness. With Zeta’s help, he is able to carry on working and living a normal life.
The centre has only enough funds to open three days a week. As they attempt to become more fully funded, Claire Guest says she is amazed constantly at the dog’s abilities. “We teach dogs to be problem solvers,” she said. “This completely turns training on its head. Instead of showing the dog what to do, we give him a problem and wait for him to solve it.”
Thus, a dog confronted with eight vials is rewarded and encouraged when he shows interest in the one vial that contains cancer cells. Another trainer, Rob Davis, said, “The dog says, ‘Oh, is that what you wanted? Let me see if I can find that smell for you again.’”
In the future, Claire predicts they’ll be able to train a dog to alert to a mentally ill owner’s oncoming schizophrenic break, by conditioning dogs to alert to high levels of cortisol in the blood.
While Bio-Detection Dogs have mostly come to the centre as rescues or donations, Claire confirmed that the purebred Gundog breeds trained quickest and had the highest level of success.
The time could come when your GP asks for a urine sample and a breath sample that are taken to a laboratory where a dog checks and alerts to any faint scent of cancer.
When cancer is found early, the chance of recovery is great. Canines have always helped man. Now, canine noses have led them to our even more complicated problems, ones that lie beneath the skin.
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