Dogs saving Lives
On 11th January our first speaker of 2023 was Joanna Gardiner, volunteer speaker for the charity “Medical Detection Dogs” one of only two charities in the world pioneering exciting work using dogs both to detect illness (bio-detection dogs) and to support those with serious medical conditions (medical alert assistance dogs).
We know that dogs love to sniff things, including some pretty nasty things; they certainly have the equipment to enjoy their sniffing – 300 million scent receptors in contrast to a human’s measly five million. They can detect a teaspoonful of sugar in a dilution of 2 Olympic swimming-pools’ worth of water. They can be trained using a simple reward system to show when they have detected a particular smell. They are 94% accurate in detecting Covid – being able to detect it on a tee-shirt that has been worn by someone with the virus. PCR tests have been shown to be, at best, around 74% accurate. Of course, Covid testing is becoming much less necessary but doggy skills are by no means limited to Covid. There are many other serious illnesses that they can be trained to spot including cancer and the notoriously difficult to diagnose Parkinson’s. The charity is involved in several research projects exploring areas in which dogs can contribute to diagnosis.
The other arm of the charity focusses on training dogs to assist those with life threatening conditions, for example, Diabetes Type 1, severe allergies, and POTS (which poses a risk of serious injury in rare, severe cases arising from sudden fainting many times a day, with no warning signals). They can alert their human partner to an impending crisis and take the necessary action. (For example in the case of one unusually small assistance dog, pressing the emergency alarm with its bottom!) Joanna told us of an instance of a person with no less than 4 life threatening conditions. Her dog could not only
detect which one was presenting a threat, but could select the correct medication for it from her bag and take it to her.
We saw very moving video clips from 2 young women with POTS, previously entirely housebound (in one example for 28 years), whose lives had been utterly transformed by having such a dog. They both described how they had “given up on life” but once they had assistance from a dog were able to enjoy many of their normal activities and become contributing members of society again – one had been able to resume her studies to be a vet and had qualified. Both young women, quite emotionally, described themselves as now happy and hopeful.
Joanna told us too about the extensive (and expensive) training the assistance and detection dogs receive, their selection and their working lives.
It was an inspirational talk, preceded by our, as always, wonderful Stapleton Arms lunch which involved some very lively chat as members got together after the Christmas break.
It was an excellent start to the New Year.
The Charity’s website is at https://www.medicaldetectiondogs.org.uk/
Julia Holman
Speaker Secretary. 12/01/2023