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There have been numerous studies using dogs to detect cancer, and consistently they have outperformed some of the most sophisticated diagnostic tools. In one such study dogs were brought in to smell the urine of several people, some who had bladder cancer and some who didn't. The dogs accurately identified the urine of those who had bladder cancer, but they also kept coming back to one urine sample of an individual who had been tested and found not to have cancer. So strong was the accuracy of dogs in these tests that the researchers went back to the person to whom that urine sample belonged and re-tested him, this time more extensively. It turned out that the individual did have bladder cancer in its very early stages. This test was so astonishing in its findings that it was a feature story on "60 Minutes."

I have my own experience with the diagnostic abilities of animals, but it doesn't have to do with cancer. Two years ago I stepped in a patch of what I thought was water but turned out to be black ice. Every last ounce of me landed on the tibial plateau of my knee, sending blinding pain down my leg. Within ten minutes the pain had faded and I was left with a dull ache. As mysterious as the diagnostic abilities of animals is, so too is my own body, which doesn't seem to register bone pain, nor does it swell or bruise at the site of a damaged bone. The day after the fall my knee was stiff, but nothing too bad. It wasn't until two weeks later when two of my dogs repeatedly sat next to me and licked the side of my knee where I'd landed that I thought perhaps I'd better have it checked.

Not only was my knee damaged, the bone was split in two. I spent the next six months in a wheelchair with both my orthopedic specialist and I hoping it would heal without having surgery. It did. That particular bone bears all the weight of the human body, and had my dogs not been so insistent on tending to a wound I could neither see nor feel, I could very well have ended up with a total knee replacement and perhaps a diseased bone. There have been other times when I've had a sinus headache and one or the other, or both, of my dogs will start licking my face at just the spot where my sinus hurts the most. I now call my dogs Dr. House One and Dr. House Two.

Can animals detect cancer or injury? I doubt it, but they do detect something that is out of the ordinary. Their sense of smell, heat detection, and ability to identify patterns of behavior we can't see is part of their design for survival. Now it seems that we're waking up to the diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities of their heightened senses for our own survival. I've always found it odd that dogs and cats have no fear of humans when they're born, and humans are so attracted to a species other than there own. The affection, bond, and intensely intimate relationship between humans and their pets is something not normally found in nature. We seem to love each other and need the company of each other, but now it seems that we take care of each other in ways we're just beginning to explore and understand.

I trust my doctor as a partner in my health care, but it's my dogs that I pay attention to for the signal that it's time to call the doctor.

Learn more about this author, Cyd Madsen.
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