Woman says dog sniffs her cancer - Atlanta News, Weather, Traffic, and Sports | FOX 5

A dog's sense of smell is thousands of times more powerful than a human's.
     
Dogs can pick up on the trail of a missing person a week after they've disappeared and detect the faintest traces of hidden explosives.  But a retired Walnut Grove teacher says her dog picked up on the scent of a tumor growing inside her body.

Researchers in Germany, Japan and in the U.S. are studying whether specially-trained dogs can detect certain cancers. The theory is that the dogs can smell certain chemical changes in the body linked to the disease.

Carol Witcher doesn't know what her 9-year-old boxer, Floyd Henry, smelled, but she feels certain that he knew she was in danger.

"It started in February of 2008, that I really began to notice it," said Witcher. "He just kept sniffing my nose and my breath and irritating me.  And I would say ‘Don't,' and I'd push my hands and say, ‘Don't mess with my nose.  What's wrong with you?'"

But he did it again,

"He leaned back and he jumped at my face at my nose like, ‘I'm just gonna bite that puppy off!'  It kind of startled me because he'd never done that. I said, ‘You can't do that to people,'" said Carol.

Then, Carol says, Floyd Henry pushed against her right breast.

"And looked at me strange at his face. And I said, ‘What's wrong?'  And he pushed again.  And he pushed real hard!  I said, ‘Doggone it, that hurt,'" said Carol. "When he pushed against it, I felt it, and I said, ‘There is a little thing there.' And it was a little thing.  But that little thing turned out to be the size of a baseball.  So he was letting me know, ‘Let's just get it out.'"

Carol doesn't know what Floyd Henry smelled,

"But it was something he didn't like. It was like he was saying, ‘That doesn't belong there,'" said Carol.

He was right. Carol had stage 3 breast cancer.

Stories like Floyd Henry's have cancer researchers wondering what a dog's nose knows. They're studying whether specially trained dogs can detect illnesses like lung cancer from breath samples, or ovarian cancer from patients' urine,

Carol returned home after her surgery to take out her breast tumor,

"When I went to bed that night, he slept right beside me.  Never once came up and sniffed it, and he hasn't since. He's completely at peace with it," said Carol.

Carol says of all the boxers in her life -- and there have been many -- Floyd Henry is the most special. They just speak the same language, well, kind of.

He's grown a little gray in the muzzle, and moves little more slowly, but Floyd Henry is her miracle man.

"With him, and having gone through this, it's such a trust," said Carol. "We just have a remarkable relationship."

Researchers at the University of Arkansas's medical school are studying whether dogs can detect ovarian cancer from urine samples.

The research is in the very early stages, and since dogs can't tell us, it's hard to know what, if any, chemical they're picking up on. But Carol feels certain that Floyd Henry sensed she was sick long before she knew it.