UK Woman Says Dog Sniffed Out Her Cancer, Saved Her Life

Josie Conlon is alive today thanks to an unlikely hero, her 2-year-old border collie named Ted.

Conlon said that her dog, who is a rescue, was not really all that affectionate.

Then one day he just kept getting fresh with her breasts, pawing and nuzzling a spot on her chest. When she felt the area, she noticed the lump.

When she went to the doctor soon after, she learned the lump was cancer.

Fortunately, the cancer had not spread, but the lump was still dangerous.

It was “at this point that I was told that the tumor I had was particularly aggressive and had been growing very quickly,” she told the Daily Telegraph.“If I’d left it any later before going to the doctor the consequences do not bear thinking about.”

Recently, Conlon got the good news that although she will still have to undergo chemotherapy, surgery to remove the lump appeared successful.

She also said that she hopes others will listen to their dogs.

“I think a lot of people would probably just push a dog away if it started clawing at their chest, but dog owners should take notice, because Ted really did save my life,” the dog lover stressed.

Conlon is also not the only UK dog owner to credit their dog for sniffing out their cancer.

In 2009, Dr. Claire Guest’s dog detected her breast cancer, reinforcing her academic and practical study of dogs and medical care.

In 2004, Guest published a groundbreaking article showing dogs could in fact smell out cancer, but said she soon felt “deflated by all the negativity” of skeptics who did not understand her and her team’s research and vision.

She now helps train Medical Detection Dogs to help sniff out a variety of ills, and has learned to temper her message about cancer sniffing dogs to win over her critics.

“I didn’t want to alienate people,” Dr. Guest said.  “But now I say: ‘Come on, this information could save lives. We have a duty to try.