Animals as diagnosticians, and Healers.

This started as a post in another thread.
But It was taking it off subject, derailing it a little.

So I'm starting a thread on this specific subject.
Animals have basically the same senses as ourselves. Thing is these senses are magnified depending on an animals role in the environment. Bats can makes sounds, and decode the echo into a sort of picture. Humans can also hear, and make noises. But the best we can do there is sense a general direction.
Cats and dogs can also see, but due to different optical structures, they can see better in the dark than we can.
There there is the nose of a dog. I think a dog's olfactory sense is analogous to a bat's echolocation. I swear my dog can "see" with his nose.

So here is my story, quoted from a previous post in this thread:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Rescue dogs are the best!
I'll tell you the story of our Lab/Akita mix.
It's kind of a new behavior...But he is my wife's personal diagnostician.
My wife has some blood clotting issues, they often start in her legs.
DVT's they call them. More than once a piece of clot broke off, and went to her lungs..an embolism.
She could have died. Many people do. My wife has survived 3.

We noticed something though. When her leg would become painful...Our big guy would put his nose right up against her leg. Not where the pain was, but in another location. We just thought he was sensing her pain, and being nice to her..
However...The pain got so unbearable, we went to emergency...Sure enough an ultrasound scan revealed the deep clot. Right where our dog was putting his nose. He smelled the blood maybe?

A few months later, he did it again...This time she wasn't in as much pain...But we scheduled with an imaging center then next day. Again..his nose was right on the money. Exact spot...We got it early, and avoided a potential embolism.

This happened one more time, and he was right on the money again. Coincidence? I dunno.

But this is what closed the deal for me. She was having similar pains..in the same locations as before.
But Leo the dog, could not have cared less...We went to the imaging center again, just in case.
This time, it was just a surface bruise..with no Deep Vein Thrombosis...Leo was right!

He's a special critter in our house.

Do you have a story like this? Please share.

I heard of stories where dolphins heal Alzheimer's and other very unique cases, we are all interconnected in a way.

Very interesting. I haven't really heard to many stories like this, but I'd like to see some more replies.

I saw a story sometime in the last few months (not sure if it was on ATS) about a man who passed out drunk in his home. Not sure if it was related or not, but his big toe was infected, and it would have eventually killed him. The dog CHEWED OFF the man's infected toe and ATE IT. Nobody knows whether the dog knew what it was doing, but the doctors said it unquestionably saved the man's life.

www.reuters.com... (because nobody would believe me if I didn't go and find a link :p)

(edit: deleted something about gangrene, which was not in the original article, so either I read a different article originally or read it wrong)

I think that dogs can actually smell it. Here is an article from National Geographic saying that dogs can detect lung or breast cancer from a person's breath.
news.nationalgeographic.com...

This article states that dogs can be trained to detect bladder cancer and possible even kidney cancer:
www.cbsnews.com...

Considering these two stories, I have to agree that their sense of smell could be useful in detecting health problems. By the way, I'm glad that you paid attention to your dog and got your wife checked out.

There was a story on here a while ago about a cat that predicted death! It lived in an old peoples home, and it used to sit on peoples knees a few days before they died. It was so accurate that the staff used to call the children to say it was time if the cat sat on someone.

Here you go.

I love this thread and hope more people will participate with their animal stories, I know they are out there.

I have a special 2 year old cat named Tonks. My daughter brought her home as a baby after watching her friend's cat give birth to her and immediately my daughter took to this one female kitten. When she brought her home I said "no way" because we already have too many animals. But, we could not find a good home for her, and the only shelter available to us is a high kill shelter. Well, to make a long story short, we all fell in love with her and I caved and she is a part of the family. I started noticing that as the kitten got older, she would always come and lay on my chest when I was upset. I have developed high blood pressure over the last few years (been through an extreme amount of stress over the last 8 years, won't bore anyone with details since we all have stress), which is kinda new to me since most of my life my BP was always low. And recently the doctor has detected an irregularity in my heart beat (but they think it could be caused my a medication I've taken). Since I take my own blood pressure readings, I started monitoring my readings throughout the day and my pressure drops significantly after my kittie lays on my chest. She has a special energy I've not noticed in any cat, the best way to describe it is a feel good energy. I guess she has a sense of when my pressure or heart is not right, and honestly, she has such an adorable face, that just looking at her is enough to make anyone melt, I'll give her that! I sincerely think she is a healer cat.

I have had bursitis in my elbow for years, and when I'm on the computer for a long time, it really aggravates it. One day, my little Shihtzu started licking my elbow, right on the sore spot. He could smell something there, maybe blood flow?
I don't know why, but the pain went away. When it gets painful, he's back at my elbow, licking the sore spot. If it doesn't hurt, he doesn't bother. It sounds strange, but it does feel much better. It could be a placebo effect, or somehow he's making the circulation better? Some type of energy field being affected? No idea, but something sure worked.
He's my little healer.

I have an Auto-Immune disorder where sometimes I have a flare up in my joints or eyes so bad that I cannot move without severe pain. We have a pitbull named Roadkill (a totally different story!) that I noticed would pay particular attention to either of my arms or legs or eyes and within hours the flare up would happen. I now pay attention to him when he does this so I know to get my wheelchair ready or a sling, or finish up whatever I am in the middle of. He also "guards" me from all the other animals when this occurs.

Love that dog like crazy and he has even saved my grandmothers life. She has alzheimers & dementia and we took care of her for a few years till she got REAL bad. But one time she was in the back yard and somehow got beyond the fenced area and into the woods behind the house and got lost - she thought she was back home in WV. We could not find her anywhere. Finally because Roadkill was going absolutely nuts in the house I let him out and he took us directly to her. And not where he went in a beeline and we just followed where he disappeared, what he did was go a little ways, stop and wait for us to catch up, go some more and wait again, and he was impatient too - his tail swinging so hard his whole butt swinging with it! We found grandma close to passed out from the heat.

To this day I consider him a hero.

Sorry if derailing, but I know someone close who had a DVT, and I know a little about it.

Generally very few healthy people under 40-50 years of age get DVTs. If they do, most of the times it's some kind of genetic predisposition to getting them. This is what my friend has. For him, its a protein synthesis failure in the blood. Anyway,

Your wife should be on some kind of "blood-thinning" medicine such as Innohep, or Marevan, if she has been through 3 DVTs. This is paramount.
The medicine lowers the risk of bloodclots by reducing the bloods ability to dry out. Of course this means that if you get a cut, it will bleed for a longer period of time.

reply to post by TheGrandWazoo


You are correct 100 percent.
And she is doing those things.
she seems to be easily ramped up and down on her blood "thinness"
Currently she has no real diagnosis. Lupus is at the top of the list...Because of some other conditions point to it

Wow this is a great thread, especially since I was going to start a topic on this subject. I recently fell down the basement steps, and ripped the ligaments in my knee. Shortly after that I noticed my dog is sniffing and licking at my bad knee right in the area of the tear. He must be able to smell it or something. Its funny I would find this thread right now. Anyhow, thats my little story

This is a great story, and after reading it I remembered this thread.

today.msnbc.msn.com...

I sincerely wish animals had there own forum here on ATS, wish the powers that be on this site would see how important a topic they are and deserve their own forum, at least for me animals give me hope in such a sad world.

Here is the gross out post.

I am allergic to topical antibotics.

For the past ten years my dogs clean and heal my wounds.

One of my dogs and I were play fighting and she accidently scraped the hide off a large part of my leg,
My skin is thin because I am older than than dirt and the scratch bled profusely.

Right away Rosie began to lick the blood and I let her until the bleeding ceased.

She became my nurse and licked the wound at least twice a day.
The scratch healed beautifully and hardly no scaring.

So, for the last ten years my dogs have taken care of all my scratches and cuts.

The dogs even can tell when I an itching from an insect bite and start licking the bite and the itch soon goes away.

Over the past years I have found that many of my river rat friends use their dogs to heal their wounds.

I only made this public last year as I even grossed myself out thinking about it.

I love this story! This lady adopted two cats from her shelter, saving their lives, and that very day one of the newly adopted cats saved his new owner from a diabetic coma and possibly death. How awesome!

shine.yahoo.com...

Interesting topic!

For about a month I was feeling particularly out of sorts...sinus infection , severe thirst and sleeping a LOT, body cramps,all sorts of things that weren't normal. My dog would whine everyday and sit very close to me , he would act nervous at certain times of the day and night. Some days were worse than others and he was very attentive.
Turns out I ended up in the ER with blood sugar over 500 and a dangerously low potassium level. I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and put on insulin 4 times a day as well as short term potassium and a strict diet. I was in the hospital 2 days and my sugars are back to normal ,since I returned home my dog hasn't whined once , not once!

I firmly believe animals have even more incredible senses than we think and just like people , some are more "gifted" than others , not sure if that's the right word since I believe we all have abilities that can be tapped in to.
My favorite old story is the one where the dog kept sniffing its' owners mole and it turned out to be melanoma.

Thanks for the thread!