When Dogs Know Before We Do: The Extraordinary World of Medical Detection Dogs
- Suzanne
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
by Callie Di Nello
Last Sunday, Siena Luna and I had ourselves quite the adventure at GoodWoof. Siena Luna is our Pomeranian - small, fluffy, endlessly opinionated, sassy and - as it turns out - rather more medically gifted than any of us have given her credit for. More on that in a moment ...
We attended the most wonderful talk called “The Nose Knows” about Medical Detection Dogs, and I have to tell you - the science is astonishing. Yet as we sat on bundles of hay in the Wellness Stage, it reminded me so much of Siena and her own amazing medical-detection nose.
So let me tell you about Siena and the breast clinic ...
Some of you will know that in 2024, I underwent nine months of daily wound healing following breast surgery and a second diagnosis of breast cancer. Nine. Months. It was a long, utterly exhausting road. My breast clinic nursing team helped me work my appointments with them around care for Siena - and they soon learned to ask: "How's Siena? Is she still coming to you for cuddles? Or has she been a bit off with you this week?"
All this had begun when I casually mentioned that I wasn’t feeling too great, and Siena had stopped curling up with me on the sofa. She seemed ... unsettled, distant. Still very loving, but no snuggling. Ever on the alert, my angel-nurse took a swab … and lo and behold, I’d developed a wound infection. We thought that it was a bit strange - a coincidence, me developing an infection and Siena avoiding me, when she’s usually a real mummy’s girl. But then it happened again. Each time, the swab would come back positive for some kind of infection.
Siena’s nose and instincts were always right. So in the end, my brilliant nurses would only swab me if Siena had been behaving unusually: she never once gave us a false result. My little Pomeranian had essentially become part of my medical team - and nobody had trained her to do a single thing.
I shared this story at GoodWoof with Bobbin's trainer during the Medical Detection Dogs talk, and she smiled widely and said: "That's exactly what we train them to do."
(I've filmed a little bit from the day that Emilio captured for me about people with POTS: you can watch it here:
So what are Medical Detection Dogs?
Medical Detection Dogs is a UK charity, and honestly, the work they do is nothing short of remarkable. They train two types of dogs:
Medical Alert Assistance Dogs are matched with people living with serious, complex, life-threatening conditions. These incredible dogs are trained to pick up on the tiniest biochemical changes in their person's body - the kind that happen before a medical crisis - and alert them in time to do something about it. We're talking about conditions such as PoTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), Addison's Disease, Type 1 Diabetes, severe allergies, non-epileptic seizures, and Mast Cell Activation Syndrome.
Bio Detection Dogs work in a research context, being trained to sniff out the odour signatures of diseases - including various cancers, Parkinson's Disease, malaria, and bacterial infections - from samples like breath, urine, and sweat.
Remarkably, they do this with zero government funding: they run entirely on the generosity of donations. Please do keep that in mind if you feel moved to support them!
At GoodWoof, we were given live demonstrations using training samples. Watching a dog respond immediately, calmly and with the utmost precision, was ... well, I defy anyone to watch that and not feel a little shiver down their spine. It's phenomenal.
But how do they do it? (This is the sciency bit … and it's fabulous, my inner geek lit up like a Christmas tree!)
Right. Stick with me here, because this is where your mind is going to be properly mind-blown.
Dogs have up to 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses. We have 5 million. FIVE! Their brain's olfactory bulb - the part that processes smell - is around 40 times bigger than ours relative to brain size. Dogs can detect substances at concentrations of one part per trillion. Do you know what that is? That's the equivalent of a single drop of liquid in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Our jaws dropped at this nugget of information during their talk.
When our bodies experience disease, infection, or a significant physiological change, our biochemistry shifts. Those shifts produce changes in something called volatile organic compounds - VOCs - tiny chemical molecules that we release through our breath, sweat, and skin. Completely invisible to us. Completely odourless to us. But to a dog? It’s like a volcano of scents erupting in front of their paws. Siena didn't know any of that science. She just knew something was a bit off with her mummy - and she acted on it, every time.
For conditions like Addison's and PoTS, the hormonal changes that happen before an episode - things like shifts in cortisol, blood pressure, adrenal function - create a detectable scent change. A trained Medical Alert Assistance Dog can pick this up with several minutes to spare, giving their person time to sit down safely, take medication, or call for help before the episode hits.
Why I'm sharing this with our Mobilates community
So many of us live with chronic and complex health conditions. So much of our daily energy goes into managing that ever-present uncertainty. When will the next episode come? Will I be somewhere safe? Will anyone be with me?
A Medical Alert Assistance Dog doesn't just offer physical safety - it offers something that I think matters just as much, if not more: a sense of agency, of independence. Of not being at the complete mercy of your own body. Of having a few minutes' warning. Of having a faithful, devoted companion who is quite literally reading you at a chemical level, 24 hours a day, because that is what they were born - and trained - to do.
One of the stories shared at the talk was about a young woman called Jade, who has PoTS. Her assistance dog, Jules, so transformed her daily life and confidence that she was able to get back on track to pursue her dream of becoming a vet. A full, beautiful, hopeful circle. Such a heart-warming tale.
Siena, my accidental medical detective
What I keep thinking of since we met the Medical Detection dogs, is this: Siena was never trained. There was no programme, no handler, no reward system. She’s got the tiniest of noses and it takes her a few moments to sniff out a surprise treat on a rug - if we’re outside in the park, forget it. She’ll never find it, bless her. But my darling girl just lived with me, loved me, and paid attention in a way that - without any of us realising it - genuinely helped protect my health during one of the most vulnerable periods of my life.
Dogs have been alongside humans for thousands of years. And somewhere in that long, extraordinary relationship, they learned to read us. Our scent, our hormones, our health - in ways that science is only now beginning to catch up with.
My breast clinic nurse - a wonderful, pragmatic, brilliant NHS angel-nurse - essentially started using a Pomeranian as a diagnostic tool. And Siena never, not once, got it wrong. I love her so much I could burst. 🐾
Want to know more, or support the charity?
With so much love, from me and Siena Luna 🐾
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