Can animals sense illness?

I am convinced my dog (German Shepherd) knows when I am ill.

My wife gets freaked out because I let her lick my face, she licks poo in the garden....but obviously I wouldnt let her lick my face if her breath smelled of poo!

If she is injured she licks the stitches or the sore and I understand that although saliva has bacteria, it also can be very antiseptic. So if I have a cut or a blister and she hasnt been licking poo I will let her lick the wound. I imagine they can smell the blood/flesh so know its an injury and it could kill me if I were a wild dog...I dont know if it heals quicker but I dont need to use a plaster as once she has finished its just a sealed wound. I have never been sick.

But what gets me is that I get gout and when I have an attack, she goes mad trying to lick my inflamed joint, she wants to sit at my feet and she wont leave my side until my medications reduces the pain and swelling.

Now I dont think dogs can cure Ebola, but can they sense illness more than smell?

a reply to: Forensick

Now I dont think dogs can cure Ebola, but can they sense illness more than smell?

Illness will alter body chemistry. Altered body chemistry will produce changes in body odor.
www.medicalnewstoday.com...

I wouldn't necessarily rely on a dog for the diagnosis though.

Absolutely they can! Read the story of Oscar the hospice Cat who had predicted 50 peoples death in a nursing home.

a reply to: Phage

Is it scary that I rely on Google....

For gout I have to take these anti-inflammatory pills called Indomethacin. Recently my doctors prescription isnt touching the sides so I googled other peoples dose, seems that my dose which according to my doctor is high, isnt. So I take more than prescribed.

One night I think I am having a heart attack, pins and needles in my arms, breathing like something is sat on my chest....ready to wake the wife up and go to the hospital.

So I google these symptoms and it says im having a panic attack, knowing I have taken the Indomethacin I read that it can give you panic attacks, so I stop panicking because I know its not a heart attack its a side effect from the pills.

Obviously I am still here, and have 2 episodes since, one on a plane where I felt like i was going mad and was going to start screaming, I told myself you just had a handful of Indomethacin because you are flying and the driving for 5 hours and that will make the gout ache into a full on attack. Fell asleep and woke up fine!

So thanks, I wont be relying on the dog for a diagnosis, unless she starts licking a lump on my balls......

a reply to: Forensick

Absolutely they can .

dont know if it heals quicker but I dont need to use a plaster as once she has finished its just a sealed wound. I have never been sick.

When i was younger a family in the town had bad problems with boils . A classmate who was part of this family confided that all the antibiotics prescribed did little to help . They all lined up and let the dog lick them and no more problems within a week .
Now this is anecdotal only but i seen this with my owns eyes . Maybe the drugs were just kicking in and that was the reason for the rapid recovery .

originally posted by: Aqualung2012
Absolutely they can! Read the story of Oscar the hospice Cat who had predicted 50 peoples death in a nursing home.

There are many nursing homes that actually allow a cat to roam the halls. The town I grew up in always had one. For much the same reason. They also had a superstition. If a patient passed away they opened their window to allow their soul to "connect" or fly to heaven, otherwise staff felt it would be trapped to roam the halls forever. If they found the cat refusing to leave a patient's room, they'd keep an eye on the patient but leave the cat alone.

Can dogs smell cancer?

Anecdotes about dogs “sensing” when their owners were sick before any diagnosis was made may sound crazy at first. But in the last decade, several scientists have put dogs’ noses to the test in controlled laboratory experiments — diseases give off odors that, at least theoretically, dogs can smell. Malignant tumors exude tiny amounts of chemicals called alkanes and benzene derivatives not present in healthy tissue. If a dog can identify chemical traces in the range of parts per trillion, is it really crazy to think they can detect cancer, even before people know they’re sick?

The first scientific test of canine cancer-detecting, to my knowledge, was in 2004. James C. Walker, of the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University, and colleagues trained two dogs to detect melanoma tissue samples hidden on the skin of healthy volunteers. The dogs were trained and tested with methods normally used for forensic bomb- or drug-sniffing dogs.

One dog “confirmed” the presence of melanoma on five patients, and even detected cancer in a sample that was initially deemed negative, but subsequent histopathological examination revealed to contain melanoma in a fraction of the cells.

With breast cancer, the dogs identified positive samples 88 percent of the time with no false positives. The dogs performed as well as the most recent screening tests for the diseases. It is important to note that all the tests were double-blind, meaning neither the dog handlers nor the experimenters knew which samples were which. By the scent of breath samples alone, the dogs identified 55 lung and 31 breast cancer patients as well as 83 healthy people.

Dogs can predict when a seizure will occur

There are two types of dogs that assist patients with epilepsy. Those that recognize and warn of an impending or ongoing seizure are called seizure alert dogs; those that remain with the person to assist with the aftermath of seizure activity are seizure response dogs.

Personally I'd not only say yes, they can tell when we are ill, but they quite possibly can save our lives as well. Hope this answers the question.

Im just watching my daughter scare the dog with a squeaky pig - sense definitely does not mean sensible!

Animals have an incredible sense of smell,dogs especially,if you are getting sick the chemistry in your body changes and animals can surely smell it......so yes i believe they can smell illness

There are so many variables that it’s almost impossible to quantify. I’ve seen figures indicating that it’s from 10 to 100 to 1,000 to 1,000,000 times better. Scientists I've spoken with say that dogs can detect some, if not most, odors at concentrations of parts per trillion.

www.dogster.com...

a reply to: Forensick

This is a reply to personal experience.
PHAGE is absolutely correct.

We'll start back in December. I have a Weimaraner whom has a keen sense of smell. He started sniffing out me and my Pittbull.
As luck would have it. I had 12 kidney stones on my left side. I went through the motions of having laser surgery plus a stent. Murphy( the Weimaraner) would not leave me alone. He kept sniffing were the kidney was. On top of smelling my breath. He kept getting agitated and whimpered.
Turns out. I had RCC ( renal cell carcinoma ).

I had the kidney removed. And some minor Chemotherapy. That really messed his day up.

Now for my pittbull. As the same it started back in December. Murphy kept sniffing out Mylo..( pittbull MY little one ) I got the hint when mylo would not come running for his food or the crinkle of a freshly opened cheeseburger. Mylo barely drank water too.
Mylo like me is suffering kidney and liver failure.
Right now. Murphy is guarding Mylo.. after 2 weeks of hand feeding food and meds. Plus 500 ml of fluid sub que. The sad decision has been made.
I'm in tears typing this.
I'm crushed...I'm not sure how Murphy is going to take it. Come Tuesday. A true family member will be put down.
Now I'm not to sure about smell at this point. But Murphy knows something is up.
Murphy keeps trying to nudge mylo's water bowl at him. Murphy wraps himself around Mylo.

I'm glad you wrote this thread FORENSICK.
We don't give our pets enough credit.
to our furry four legged family.

a reply to: Forensick

Watched a doco on dogs licking parts of their owners bodies and weeks months later the owner found out they had cancer in that spot. Experiments were conducted on this using proper scientific methods and it turned out that dogs have a 1000 times stronger sense of smell than humans.

This research was conducted in a hospital in the US (I think?) that was funded by donations and the hospital completely disowned the research and said they would not be going forward with it.

Why does that not surprise me these days?

originally posted by: Aqualung2012
Absolutely they can! Read the story of Oscar the hospice Cat who had predicted 50 peoples death in a nursing home.

interesting little story about that cat I read a while back. It actually second guessed the medical staff and was right about a patient dying when they expected another patient to die that night.

a reply to: Bigburgh

Sorry to hear that. It's no exaggeration that pets can become part of the family in every sense.

I once had a stomach bug and vomited into a waste can I had handy just in case. My dog was with me and got very upset. Another time I was depressed over my dad's death and started crying and my dog whined and pawed me and tried to comfort me. Yes, they can sense sickness and emotion. Not all dogs, probably.

a reply to: sg1642

Thanks for your thoughts. Funny I was thinking of he hospice cat.
We saw a film on it in nursing school. But I didn't need a documentary to tell me what was right in front of me.

It's hard to have pets. You fall in love. But there is just not enough time.
It makes me feel guilty for every time I had to discipline during the training years.
Makes me want to cower in a corner with shame.

That's Murphy in my avatar box. That was one year ago as of February 18th
He's protective of his sick friend.
I've never seen a dog wrap himself around a sick companion. Then nudge water and kibbles for nurturing.
Just... just amazing.

originally posted by: Bigburgh
a reply to: sg1642

Thanks for your thoughts. Funny I was thinking of he hospice cat.
We saw a film on it in nursing school. But I didn't need a documentary to tell me what was right in front of me.

It's hard to have pets. You fall in love. But there is just not enough time.
It makes me feel guilty for every time I had to discipline during the training years.
Makes me want to cower in a corner with shame.

That's Murphy in my avatar box. That was one year ago as of February 18th
He's protective of his sick friend.
I've never seen a dog wrap himself around a sick companion. Then nudge water and kibbles for nurturing.
Just... just amazing.

if you want something amazing to watch search YouTube for the dog dragging his little companion out of the traffic on a motorway (freeway). The dog got hit and injured and his little friend watched until there was a big enough gap in the traffic then ran out and dragged him to safety.

Yes, it seems they can... likely due to altered smell.

My old doggy kept sniffing a little discoloration on my gf's foot and wouldn't let it go... kept drawing our attention to it... and yup, turns out it was precancerous.

Of course they can read illnesses. That is why people with disabilities often have
an animal to help them. They do so many things for people.
Like Phage said they read your chemistry so this benefits many people
with epilepsy, diabetes, PTSD especially for veterans & many other medical conditions.
I have a service dog & she reads my anxiety before it goes into panic mode & she
has her job to do.
Not all service animals are dogs...there are cats, monkeys, pigs & others.
It depends on the needs of the owner, the laws where you live & so forth.

Service animals are a HUGE help to those in need. I work with animals &
it is important for those in need to have the support. The animal knows what's
going on & can even alert someone to come to assist you & can even call 911.

Cheers
Ektar

a reply to: Bigburgh

An amazing story and very sad to hear, make sure you give Murphy loads if love, sounds like he will need it with such a lovely nature.

Very sad, stay strong!