Man Lucky to Be Alive After Dog Sniffed Out Cancerous Tumor in His Face
When 65-year-old Mark Allen received a diagnosis of a stage 4 cancerous tumor on his face, something instantly clicked into his mind. His dog, a Collie Mix named Jessie, knew of the tumo all along. According to Mirror UK, Allen shared that Jessie had been “acting oddly” months prior to his diagnosis. Jessie would constantly nudge and paw at him and became overly affectionate in a manner “she had not previously done.”
Unfortunately, at the time, Allen didn’t know that his beloved pet was simply trying to alert him of the tumor in his face. For nearly 12 months, Allen didn’t think much about Jessie’s unusual behavior, which led to the cancer spreading aggressively across the right of his face.
Allen regrettably wishes he hadn’t ignored Jessie’s warning, as he would have sought medical help sooner rather than later. Consequently, the father of two underwent a debilitating operation and a major facial reconstruction surgery to remove the tumor. He believes the treatment would have been less brutal if only he hadn’t delayed seeing the doctors.
“Had I gone to the doctors earlier, I’m sure the treatment would not have been as severe as it turned out to be,” Allen stated. Despite all this, Allen owes his second chance at life to Jessie, whose astounding sense of smell saved him from the jaws of death.
Fact or Fiction: Can Dogs Detect Cancer in Humans?
It’s no secret that our canine friends are intelligent creatures with incredible abilities. From being able to sniff out explosives and hidden drugs to sensing when we are in pain, there’s a lot that dogs can do, thanks to their heightened senses.
The big question, though, is: Can dogs smell cancer, and if so, how do they do this? Well, their noses know it all.
Findings show that dogs have 10,000 more accurate smell receptors in their noses than the human nose. This means their snouts can accurately detect the faintest of smells that our noses can’t pick up. These same findings also reveal that dogs can detect cancer in humans with nearly 97% accuracy.
Moreover, a dog’s nose is estimated to have up to 300 million olfactory receptor neurons compared to the human nose, which only has around 5 million such neurons. It’s these powerful nasal features that give dogs their cancer-sensing superpowers.
How Do Dogs Detect Cancer?
Like in other illnesses, cancerous cells often emit distinct bodily secretions and chemical odors made of substances known as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). For someone with cancer, these compounds are often present on the skin, breath, urine, blood, sweat, or stool.
“Dogs have the potential to use their incredible sense of smell to detect cancer. Specifically, they may be able to smell volatile organic compounds or byproducts of biological processes that occur in the body when there is cancer present,” shared Dr Hen of Dr. Hen Says.
Since dogs have an extraordinary sense of smell, they can sniff out these VOCs-triggered odors and figure out that something’s not right. While they may not exactly understand the concept of cancer, these unusual odors signal to them that your health is off.
“Dogs smell different things, and they understand different things. They don’t necessarily know what’s wrong, but they know that there’s something that’s not normal, that you don’t smell the way you normally do,” explained Dr. Charlene Bayer, research scientist at Georgia Tech Research Institute.
Dogs that Can Detect Cancer: Can Untrained Dogs Smell Cancer?
Dogs that can smell cancer aren’t strictly of a particular breed. Any dog, the breed notwithstanding, can detect the presence of diseased cells in a cancer patient since all dogs have a superior sense of smell.
So, if you’ve ever wondered: “What breed of dog can smell cancer?” the short answer is, any breed.
And while an untrained dog breed can still sniff out various types of cancer — from malignant melanoma to breast cancers, prostate cancer, and lung cancer, just to name a few — trained cancer-detecting dogs have a higher chance of doing so accurately.
A 2021 research study reported that a female Labrador Retriever was able to detect breast cancer in 40 out of 200 urine samples with 100% accuracy. In addition, a well-trained Labrador Retriever-Pit Bull involved in a 2017 study managed to accurately distinguish the breath of people with and without lung cancer from 390 breath samples collected. Plus, a clinical trial conducted by UK-based organization, Medical Detection Dogs, found that well-trained dogs can detect the most aggressive form of prorate cancer just by sniffing out a patient’s urine sample.
Cases of untrained dogs detecting cancer in the early stages before their owners did are also pretty common. Here’s one such story:
“So one day, my dogs started licking the sides of my dad’s head. Any chance they could get, they’d prop themselves up onto the back of the couch and lick the sides of my dad’s head, but only one side very intensely. We never really looked too deep into it, just thought it was very cute and a little odd. This continued for about two years, we had forgotten they even did it at this stage as we were so used to it. My dad ran marathons, loved running, and had pain in his leg that he chalked down to muscle pain until he went on holiday with my mum and fell. So when he came home, the doctor evaluated him and said there was nothing physically wrong with his leg, and referred him to a neurologist. The neurologist found a cancerous tumor, and guess where was it? The exact spot in his brain that my dogs were licking,” wrote one user in a Reddit discussion on dogs and their cancer detection abilities.
How Do Dogs Act When They Detect Cancer?
Oftentimes, dogs who sniff out cancer in their owners behave differently. Here are a few common reactions that dogs give off when they detect cancerous cells in their humans:
- Constantly sniffing and licking that specific area in their owner’s body
- Following their owner around more than usual
- Constantly paw-tapping at their owner
- Being overly clingy and affectionate
- Lying closer to their owner more than usual
- Constantly staring at their owner (while head-titling)
“My MIL’s Pit/Lab mix has always loved me, but right before I got diagnosed with cervical cancer he became super attached to me. I couldn’t sit down around him without having a 70lb dog in my lap. Fast forward to now, after I healed from my surgery, he still loves me, but he’s not as clingy. I am cancer free, and he doesn’t feel the need to be in my lap, bed every time he’s at my house,” wrote Reddit user @harleypark in a Reddit discussion on different ways dogs behave when they detect cancer.
