Dog Rehabilitation Center – Dogs Smell Out Cancer

Pet News Flashback – A look at this week’s past news about animals:  A Rehabilitation Center for Fearful Dogs, Dog on Wrong Flight to Ireland, Medical Detection Dogs Smell out Cancer

 ASPCA Opens Behavioral Rehabilitation Center for Fearful Dogs

Puppies and dogs who are rescued from puppy mills, abuse or neglect situations typically display behavioral and social problems. Since many animal shelters are stressed because they are at or over capacity, their resources are limited when trying to help these dogs and puppies with overcoming their fears.  Many of them are euthanized.  But a new project funded by the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) plans to tackle this problem.  The ASPCA Behavioral Center at St. Hubert’s Welfare Center in Madison, NJ opens this week – a 2 year project that plans to help socialize fearful dogs and to study and research the rehabilitation methods.  The long range goal is to share the project’s findings with animal welfare organizations nationwide to assist them as they help prepare fearful dogs for adoption.

 Dog on Wrong Flight to Ireland

Sounds like the beginning of a bad St. Patty’s day joke…right?  This was anything but a joke to the family whose beloved 6 year old English Spaniel was supposed to fly from Newark to Phoenix as reported by CNN.  Instead, 10 minutes before the flight was to land in Phoenix, the family received a call from United Airlines, informing them that their dog, Hendrix, was accidentally put on a wrong flight that was heading to Ireland.  United Airlines made sure that the dog safely made it back to the correct destination and gave a full refund to the family.  This is just one more incident involving pets flying and the safety concerns associated with the airlines and their handling of pet passengers.  See How Safe Is It To Fly With Your Pets

 Medical Detection Dogs Smell Cancer

Within the past few years, we’ve seen a lot of technological advancements in the medical field.  We’re also seeing interesting advancements with dogs being used to help identify human  cancer, using a breath test.  The BBC reports that a charity group, Medical Detection Dogs in the UK, is studying how effective dogs can be at identifying breast cancer.  The executive director of the charity was training dogs when she realized that one of the dogs was signaling to her that she may have cancer.  Sure enough, she had breast cancer.  Thanks to early detection, her cancer is now in remission.  But there is still a lot of research and clinical trials ahead to test just how reliable dogs can be at detecting cancer. Photo:  Courtesy of latteda via Flickr (CC by 2.0)