The Nose Knows

This is no surprise to me. We canines always know what's up with our humans--with all humans to tell the truth. Ya' probably don't realize it, but we can smell the difference in gender and ethnicity. (We could give a damn about sexual orientation, religious preference, and country of origin, though.)

"It has long been suspected that man's best friend has a special ability to sense when something is wrong with us. Now the first experiment to verify that scientifically has demonstrated that dogs are able to smell cancer."

That old sayin' about "smellin' fear" is right, too, so you know human inside stuff must change their outside scent, dependin' upon what's physically happenin' to them. Dad used to tell us the story of the day Silly Human Female and AHM were walkin' over to visit some neighbors. They were crossin' the lawn as a shortcut, and SHF was nervous about their big ole' German Shepherd Butch bein' loose. See, Butch really hated SHF for some reason no one could figure out. (Butch wasn't talkin' and, from what I gather, he wasn't someone you pushed for explanations. But, as it turned out, Butch was right and all of us were wrong. He had SHF thoroughly sniffed out and she must have smelled putrid!)

So there they were, strollin' along while Dad and Grand Dam watched from behind the porch gate. AHM had already given SHF the "don't-run-'cause-he'll-think-you're-prey" speech, but SHF was still kinda' laggin' behind. They were almost to the front door when the Butch Express came barrellin' down track one, motorin' like a supercharged V-8--straight for AHM.

Dad claims he was ready to go over the gate to the rescue (well, that's what he said) when Butch roared straight past AHM without so much as a glance, and nailed SHF. Okay, he really didn't nail her--just parked right in front of her, blockin' her way, and took a teeny little nip. Naturally SHF was wailin' and blubberin' like she'd been ripped limb from limb until AHM came back, took Butch in hand and hauled him away. (AHM says now she shoulda' let Butch do his thing, but that's another story.)

Anyway, we canines are able to uncover things you'd never think we could, so be glad we can't speak English 'cause our "tell all" books would make Kittylitter Kelley's scribblin's look like nursery rhymes.

"Perhaps the most intriguing finding, though, was in a comparison patient whose urine was used during the training phase. All the dogs unequivocally identified that urine as a cancer case, even though screening tests before the experiment had shown no cancer. Doctors conducted more detailed tests on the patient and found a life-threatening tumor in the right kidney."

See. We know everything. Ignore us at your peril.

posted by Harrison at 7:15 PM