If you would know a country, buy a newspaper, look in the classified ads, not for a job, for a dog. If the section for adopting or buying dogs has ads like, national kennel club registered pampered and papered purebread whatchmacallit you know something you didn't know before.
If the section has ads like, "puppies, mother Rhodesian Ridgeback - Labrador mix, father Doberman" or "Rottweiller, Doberman, Great Dane mother, Father Bull Mastiff" or "Akita Mother, Father Alsatian golden retriever mix" you also know something you did not know previuosly. One of these countries knows a thing or two about dogs, the other well... If you recognize your country in this you know what I am talking about.
As you may have guessed from the preceding, Dr. Hanley is fond of dogs. They can be very good eternally manic company. Recently I have become more fascinated by some of the other talents that dogs have in addition to being friendly companions. If you look back at the "future of science 1" post, you will notice that one thing I would like to see is someone build a detector that equals a dog's nose for sensitivity. Analytical chemistry still needs dogs for inspiration.
The things is, this is not really doing the issue justice. Dogs combine intelligence with an exquisite sense of smell to do some truly amazing tasks. For example, I was recently reading an article where a dog has been trained to recognize cancer based on the smell (presumably) of someone's breath. The ability beat most other tests, many of which were more expensive.
Another example was that persons with serious epilepsy can get seizure warning dogs. These dogs are trained to be able to (somehow?!) recognize approximately 5-10 minutes in advance that someone will be havng a siezure. Add this to seeing eye dogs for blind people and hearing ear dogs for the deaf.
Forensics scientists have been looking into bomb and drug sniffing dogs to find out what it is that clues the dogs to the presence of the items of interest. A well trained dog can do pretty well, but apparently there is some variation in the quality of training so results are somewhat varied. In this study they have found that for certain items it is impurities associated with the compounds of interest that the dogs notice not the compounds themselves.
All this in a furry package seems a bit too good to be true. When you add to that reports that pet owners live longer and that the presence of a dog in hospitals or nursing homes immediately lowers stress levels it seems to me that we need to think a little more about these animals. Don't believe me? Do a google search on "Nico the Shih-Tzu and Kolya the Great Pyrenees" and what they are doing at UCLA medical center.
I think I would feel better if my dogs stay with me next time I need to be hospitalized.
