We love this charity! Great to see them in the headlines... Dr Claire Guest, the charity’s chief executive, knows first-hand what lifesavers the dogs can be; her own Labrador, Daisy, alerted her to breast cancer. Daisy was in training to sniff out prostate and bladder cancer at the time, when she started jumping up at Guest for no apparent reason and seemed unusually attentive and anxious. One day she bumped into Guest’s chest with her nose and it was unusually sore, so she decided to have it checked out. “I had a very deep breast cancer which wouldn’t have been found for years without Daisy alerting me to it,” says Guest, 50, who had a successful lumpectomy and radiotherapy after her 2009 diagnosis. Her interest in dogs’ cancer-sniffing abilities had actually been sparked years earlier, after a friend’s pooch kept licking and sniffing a mole on her leg, which turned out to be malignant melanoma. “From the description of the dog’s behaviour, I was certain that it had smelt this change,” says Guest. Her theories were backed up by scientific studies. Dogs can detect minute odour alterations that occur during the very early stages of medical changes. In 2008, the first diabetes-alert dog was trained, and in the same year the Medical Detection Dogs charity was formed. It has just welcomed the Duchess of Cornwall as its patron. As well as diabetes, Medical Alert Assistance Dogs are trained to help people with conditions including nut allergies, by alerting them when a nut allergen’s present. Canines are also being trained to help people with Addison’s disease and narcolepsy, and it’s hoped the list of conditions they can assist with will continue to grow in the future. “There’s a huge number of other conditions that we’re potentially investigating – the number of individuals with life-threatening conditions that we could help is enormous,” stresses Guest. “We’re only just realising the difference the dogs will be able to make.” The first Medical Alert Assistance Dog placements showed a huge reduction in the dog owners’ paramedic call-outs and unconscious episodes, and healthier blood-sugar levels in those with diabetes. “The fact that these dogs can prevent hospital admissions is absolutely incredible, and life-changing for their owners,” says Guest. “Seeing a dog do it, and realising that it’s saved someone from a traumatic, acute, life-threatening event is quite humbling, even for us in the charity who’ve seen it before.” Read more: westernmorningnews.co.uk/doggone-8211-medical-hounds-hunt-signs-disease/story-21028378-detail/story.html#ixzz30HJbW5cn
Posted on: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 12:37:04 +0000
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