Meet dogs training to smell intestinal cancer

These smart dogs are the first in the UK to be trained to smell the intestinal cancer.

The charity of medical detection dogs began an innovative study in 2024 to learn seven bags of how to detect tumors simply smelling urine samples from hospital patients.

Now Cocker Spaniels Mango, Callie and Dotty, Labradors Hetty, Rosie and Jodie and Retriever Willow with flat clothing are showing true signs of success.

They have proven to researchers that they can smell intestinal cancer – and now face a phase of complicated ‘blind tests’ before the results become official.

Charitable organization hopes that dogs will provide an accurate and more sensitive method of detecting intestinal cancer in the early stages faster than humans, which can improve healthier results and help save lives.

All intestinal cancer dogs and other dogs in charity are trained at the time to smell Parkinson’s disease, Pseudomonas, Covid-19, Addison’s disease and heart conditions such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. [POTS].

Gemma Butlin, chief of communication in the charity organization by Milton Keynes, said: “Charity has investigated the smell of diseases for 15 years, but our intestinal cancer project is relatively last.

“The study of intestinal cancer is new to us, but the discovery is not.

“Dogs are showing signs that they are able to detect the smell of intestinal cancer, but we have not yet done the double blind test that will give us official results. This will happen after a few months. ”

The training program included early aroma training, learning the “game” in which they had to detect a disease in the urine sample vessels.

Sampling sizes become smaller and dogs should eventually learn to smell the disease in samples from patients with other conditions.

Potal samples from the University of Hull’s teaching hospitals and are placed in interactive metal stands created by the Open University, which are inserted into a computer. Each smell is recorded and dogs tell people with a signal – like standing – if they detect cancer.

Then dogs are rewarded with pleasure and caress.

Gemma said: “We need to prove that they can detect intestinal cancer. From our point of view, every stand has an example of urine, and they smell every attitude.

“When they smell the aroma, they give us a signal as a landing or standing standing to show the smell.

“If they identify a positive sample, which lasts less than 10 seconds, they will get a lot of pleasure, caress and love.”

Gemma said that every cub also spends time connecting with their coach and having fun “too much” in the process.

“The first and most important thing is that we have to prove that they can smell cancer from samples,” she added.

“At the moment, we have smelled 1 ml of pot for pot – which, as you can imagine, is a minimal amount.

“Many people who have given samples will also have other diseases they will have to smell.”

The same method is already used to detect prostate cancer and bladder cancer from these urine samples.

The dogs joined charity when they were eight weeks and came from breeders or rescue organizations.

Gemma said: “We have just welcomed our second horses from our dogs, so we hope to get more of them ourselves.”