My dog Buck has an incredible sense of smell. Once, when we were at a relatives house, he found us by smelling under the doors of the bedrooms. We heard him out in the hall snuffling at all the doors and moving on. When he sniffed under our door he started scratching.
He can also smell out any little boo-boo. If I have a wound or scrape he worries to death about it trying to smell it or lick it or something. He will do this through the clothes too. The point is- he doesn’t have to see the wound to know it is there. Also it doesn’t have to be broken skin, he will find bruises and stubbed toes too.
Ok now, for the last few weeks he has been coming up to me and smelling at my belly, right upper quadrant. When he gets to the exact same spot he stops, looks concerned, pokes it with his nose and just looks at me with a real strange expression on his face. I have been having trouble with my gallbladder which is located in the RUQ. He has never done this on any other part of the body.
The question is, Is it possible that Buck can smell something wrong with my gallblader? I know it sounds insane, but is there any other explanation for it? Has anybody else had a dog with similar abilities or do I just have a very wierd dog with a fondness for belly-poking?
I saw a TV show about dogs trained to sniff out cancer. This was a long time ago, and I am unclear on all the details, but I do remember that the dogs performed very well.
Dogs have also been knows to predict seizures in their owners.
I’ve also heard of this sort of thing. I’ve seen the cancer detecting dogs at work and they’re very good as well as seizure detecting dogs. As to whether a dog can detect something wrong with your gallbladder I have no idea. Still, given your dog’s other described abilities I’d consider his opinion good enough to probably go to the doctor and have him/her take a close look just to be safe.
Other cool animal tricks:
Dolphins can see right through you with sonar. I saw a pregnant woman (maybe in her 8-9[sup]th[/sup] month) swimming with a dolphin. The dolphin would hover inches in front of her belly and she said she could feel sound pulses being directed at her. The dolphin stayed there quite awhile obviously exhibiting great interest. Basically the dolphin was doing an ultrasound on the woman and probably got a much clearer picture of her baby than the fuzzy black and white our machines give us.
I thought that was pretty cool (not to mention useful if you could somehow teach the dolphin to respond to human medical abnormalities).