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Lindsey Thwaites, a 51-year-old Englishwoman, can now thank her dog Brian for his incredible life-saving skills. Thanks to her sense of smell and her insistent, localized “sniffing,” the woman discovered that she was, in fact, suffering from anal cancer.
With around 220 million receptors, instead of 5 million in humans, dogs’ noses are ten thousand times more precise than those of their masters. An ability which allows them to detect substances at minute concentrations and which gives them a head start in detecting diseases such as Covid, epilepsy, diabetes but also cancer. This is what Lindsey Thwaites, a 51-year-old Englishwoman, experienced with her border collie Brian, whose attitude became very (too) insistent… So much so that the grandmother decided to seek advice.
The dog constantly sniffed his butt
Ms Thwaites, 51, has suffered from haemorrhoids since giving birth in the 1990s. Daily mail. An illness which regularly causes pain and bleeding, but which the woman does not take much care of. But last May, after yet another bleed, Lindsey Thwaites’ dog, a two-year-old border collie, changed: the dog, already affectionate, became almost harassing. There he is, constantly sniffing his mistress, she confided to the British newspaper.
“He kept sniffing my butt and followed me everywhere, I was like, ‘Brian, stop it!’
Lindsey is embarrassed by the attitude of her dog who does not want to leave her alone, but also because she then sees what this could mean:
“I told my husband, ‘He scares me because I know dogs smell like cancer.’
An anal tumor detected and treated
The one who ignored her symptoms in the anal area for too long then discovers a mass the size of a marble. She decides to consult her general practitioner to have herself examined. Which led to her diagnosis of stage three anal cancer just a month later. A detection that she directly attributes to the insistent attitude of her dog.
Since her diagnosis in June, she now faces grueling rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Her cancer is painful and uncomfortable, forcing her to use an ostomy bag, she explains, but she currently has a good chance of beating this cancer. She remains accompanied by Brian who turns out to be a detector dog as much as a therapy dog:
”Brian has been amazing, he comes over all the time for cuddles. He is so gentle with me that he lies down on the back of the sofa and places his head on my shoulder as if to say “I’ll take care of you””
A Dog’s Excessive Attention Can Alert You
As the article points out, dogs have an extremely sensitive sense of smell and can pick up “volatile organic compounds,” which are released in the early stages of many cancers. Scientific studies have even shown that dogs can distinguish between blood and tissue samples from ovarian cancer patients and healthy people. An ongoing research project would also use dogs to detect breast cancers.
Finally, dogs have also been shown to detect prostate cancer in a man’s urine or even lung cancer from a blood sample.
But if you’re not dealing with a dog trained in a particular program, yours might also give you a clue: it’s said that if a dog detects cancer in its owner, it may try to alert them by lending them more attention, by sniffing him or comforting him by gently licking his hands or feet, or by lying next to him for no reason. If this is not his usual attitude, perhaps you should take stock.