Medicine Going To The Dogs

Now here's a story with some real possibilities. It seems a German Shepard has been trained to sniff your urine and alert on the scent of thyroid cancer. Damn fine trick that and it turns out, about as accurate as the needle-and-biopsy method currently in vogue.

I mentioned this to D'wife who misheard me as saying "rear" instead of "urine" which caused the 2 watt light bulb over my head to flicker to life. If the dog can be trained to detect thyroid cancer without the painful and slow procedure, why can't the same dog be trained to sniff a persons backside and bypass the really big nuisance of a colonoscopy? After all, this is something dogs do naturally, so why not get some use out of it?

Having just endured a colonoscopy, I find the prospect intriguing.  I can't quite see anyone getting filthy rich off this but I can see the owners of good scent hounds standing to cover the costs of gourmet dog food as long as the pooch delivers reliably. That and your titled purebred could add an MD to the end of its name as well.