Cat people, beware. A group of dogs are making the definitive case for canines to be considered man’s true best friend.
If this wasn’t real life, Lucy's story could be an uplifting Disney movie about the underdog becoming a hero. The Labrador retriever and Irish water spaniel mix flunked out of guide dog school and was destined to be forgotten. However, her owners saw something special in her curiosity over random scents and decided to put that excitable energy to good use.
For seven years, Lucy trained to sniff out bladder, kidney and prostate cancer with more than 95% accuracy, CNNreports. Now, she’s part of Medical Detection Dogs, one of the largest clinical trials on doggy cancer detection. She works with eight dogs who sniff out 3,000 urine samples from National Health Service patients to determine whether or not those patients have it.
Claire Guest, the British organization’s CEO, says her fox red Labrador Daisy detected her breast cancer six years ago. "She kept staring at me and lunging into my chest. It led me to find a lump," she said. "Had it not been drawn to my attention by Daisy, I'm told my prognosis would have been very poor."
The debate is over. Dogs for the win.
