Dogs being trained to sniff out bowel cancer

By Freddie Noble

These clever dogs are the first in the UK to be trained to sniff out bowel cancer.

The Medical Detection Dogs Charity began a ground-breaking study in 2024 to teach seven pooches how to detect tumors simply by smelling urine pots from hospital patients.

Now Cocker Spaniels Mango, Callie and Dotty, Labradors Hetty, Rosie and Jodie, and Flat-coated Retriever Willow are showing real signs of success.

They have proved to researchers they can sniff out bowel cancer - and now face a stage of tricky 'blind tests' before the results are official.

The charity hopes the dogs will deliver an accurate and more sensitive early-stage bowel cancer detection method quicker than humans, which could improve healthier outcomes and help save lives.

All the Bowel Cancer Dogs and the other dogs at the charity are trained at the time to sniff out Parkinson’s disease, pseudomonas, COVID-19, Addison's disease and heart conditions like postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome [POTS].

Gemma Butlin, The Head of communications at the charity from Milton Keynes, said: "The charity has been investigating the odor of diseases for 15 years, but our bowel cancer project is relatively recent.

"The bowel cancer study is new to us, but detection is not.

"The dogs are showing signs of being able to detect the odor of bowel cancer, but we haven’t done the double-blind testing that will give us the official results yet. That will be in a few months."

The training program involved early scent training, learning the "game" in which they had to detect a disease in sample pots of urine.

The sample sizes get smaller, and the dogs eventually need to learn to sniff the disease out in samples from patients with other conditions.

Sample pots from Hull University Teaching Hospitals and are placed on interactive metal stands designed by The Open University, which feed through to a computer. Every sniff is logged, and the dogs tell humans with a signal—like standing still—if they detect cancer.

The dogs are then rewarded with treats and cuddles.

Gemma said: "We need to prove they can detect bowel cancer. From our point of view, each stand has an example of urine, and they sniff each stand.

"When they sniff the odor, they give us a signal such as sitting or stand to indicate the smell.

"If they identify a positive sample, which takes less than 10 seconds, they'll get lots of treats, cuddles, and affection."

Gemma said that each pup also spends time bonding with their trainer and having "lots of fun" in the process.

"The first and most important thing is that we need to prove that they can smell cancer from the samples," she added.

"At the moment, we've got them smelling 1ml of urine per pot - which, as you can imagine, is a minimal amount.

"Many people who have provided the samples will also have other diseases they'll need to sniff through."

The same method is already used to detect prostate cancer and bladder cancer from these urine samples.

The dogs joined the charity when they were eight weeks old and came from breeders or rescue organizations.

Gemma said: "We've just welcomed our second-ever litter of puppies from our dogs, so we're hoping to source more of them ourselves."