medicine
Dog Obsessively Sniffing Mom's Breath Detected Her Lung Cancer
Colleen's German shepherd wouldn't stop frowning at her mouth; a scan she scheduled on a hunch found stage-one lung cancer surgeons say they never catch that early.
Colleen Ferguson says her German shepherd saved her life by detecting cancer in its earliest stages—and causing her to suspect something might be wrong when the dog kept obsessively smelling her breath.
For weeks, two-year-old Inca would sniff at her mouth and frown. The 60-year-old got her teeth checked, and doctors did tests related to her gluten intolerance, but they all came back negative.
Inca would not quit the habit, so the woman from Kent, England, decided to schedule a full body scan, which revealed a “golf ball sized tumor” in her left lung–it was stage one cancer.
“She just had this focused intent on my mouth,” the former science teacher said. “She would give me such a look and walk away.”
“In no way did I expect lung cancer. It was such a shock because I am a non-smoker, and I had absolutely no symptoms at all, apart from being tired.”
After a surgery to remove the tumor Colleen didn’t need any further treatment or radiation, and she’s now making the most of her retirement years as a creative writer and published author.
“The surgeon told me, ‘we never catch it at stage 1, your dog has saved your life.
“I was just so lucky. To catch it that early was just remarkable. People need to listen to their dogs.”
Researchers in the UK have evidence that is proving that dogs can, indeed, detect cancer with their superior sense of smell.
The nonprofit Medical Detection Dogs began a groundbreaking study in 2024 to teach seven pooches—Labradors, cocker spaniels, and a retriever—how to detect tumors simply by smelling urine in pots.
“Dogs have shown us time and time again that diseases have an odor,” Claire Guest, the CEO and Chief Scientific Officer at Medical Detection Dogs, told The Times . “We are not sure whether that is the odor of the tumor itself, or the body’s response to the tumor.”
Clinical trials have proven that dogs can reliably detect diseases including prostate cancer, bladder cancer, Covid-19 , and even Parkinson’s—and dogs can be trained to do so.