Guide dogs for the blind, hearing dogs for the deaf, police dogs, search and rescue dogs to find earthquake victims, sniffer dogs to track down illegal substances - is there no end to the talents of man's best friend?
Now there may be a new application for the dog's sense of smell: sniffing out prostate cancer. Cambridge University's Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine is hoping to train dogs to react to cancer cells in urine samples, revolutionising the screening process. 'If there is a consistent change in odour the dogs will be able to detect it, of that we are in no doubt,' said Dr Barbara Sommerville. The serum tests used at present provide many false positives and some false negatives, but the Cambridge research would be based on the fact that a dog's sense of smell is so acute that it can detect any change in odour.
Three dogs have already started the process of training: 2-year-old Tarn, a Black Labrador; Bliss (7) a Golden Labrador; and German Shepherd Chip (4). There are well-documented cases of dogs predicting when their owners are going to have an epileptic attack, as well as drawing attention to cancerous skin lesions.
The researchers are not exactly sure what it is the dogs will be smelling, but they do know that a urine sample from a patient with cancer will smell different. It should be possible to train dogs to 'dognose' cancer within six months, they believe.