The smelling prowess of dogs have established the animals as contributors in detecting explosives, drugs and pipeline leaks, but their keen sense of smell is now being tested in the medical field.
Liz Dick of Langdon recently completed a unique program in California that certified her to train dogs for cancer detection. The process of preparing a dog to detect the scent of cancer involves 300 steps and takes months.
“They can detect whether or not (tumours) are benign or malignant,” said Dick. “They’ll be able to do that with an over 90 per cent accuracy level.”
In the detection process, the dogs would encounter a series of samples in a laboratory and would indicate a positive result by exhibiting a learned behaviour. The dog and the human patient would never meet.
Dick, who lost her mother to cancer in 2016, says it will take a considerable amount of time before dogs, including her Labrador Retriever named Dana, are accepted as tools for cancer screening but she firmly believes in the cancer-detecting abilities of canines.
At this time, Alberta employs no dogs for cancer screening but some of the province’s oncologists are keeping a close eye on the developing research. Trails are currently underway in the United States.
With files from CTV's Bill Macfarlane
