Dog Finds Master's Brain Tumor

This is cool. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Wednesday (HT: WorldNetDaily) that Steve Werner's dog, Wrigley, detected a brain tumor that Werner's physician couldn't find the first time around.

Then in July, Wrigley started to behave strangely.

Every day when Werner would curl up next to his beloved canine at his Brentwood home, she would turn, focus on his right ear and sniff doggedly.

"I thought it was just a friendly sniff," Werner said. "But after four or five days, I realized she seemed to be focusing on something. At some point, I noticed she was always sniffing at the opening of my right ear. She would set herself up and intently smell my ear."

One day, Werner was watching TV when a feature about cancer-sniffing dogs grabbed his attention. What he heard propelled him back to his doctor's office.

An MRI of Werner's head revealed a brain tumor the size of a pingpong ball that had spread into the inner canal of Werner's right ear - the very ear Wrigley had been sniffing persistently.

Werner got his surgery before the non-malignant tumor could grow to the point of causing a stroke or permanent facial paralysis.

The article goes on to discuss studies that scientists are conducting to see if dogs can detect various cancers and diseases. It gives the skeptical viewpoint as well.

The whole thing reminds me of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, I think in the second book (there are quite a few books that together tell one long story, so I lose track of which thing was in which book), where the nun in the hospital in France has a disease-sniffing dog named Bouton (Button).

The idea of dogs detecting diseases is creepy and fascinating at the same time. For Steve Werner, it was a life-saver.