You may remember that we talked about how Cocker Spaniels are using their amazing noses to sniff out Coronavirus recently? Well, I was fascinated to read more about this incredible story and felt that I must tell you all about how helpful our Cocker’s cute noses have been lately!
The article, entitled ‘Winning by a Nose; the dogs being trained to detect signs of Covid 19’, was published in The Guardian on June 21 by Tim Lewis and concerns a rather recalcitrant Cocker Spaniel named Asher!
Tim describes Asher as ‘a hyperactive and unruly chocolate-brown cocker spaniel with ears like pittas and a Rudi Völler frizzy shag, he was shunted from owner to owner, maybe as many as seven by the age of three’.
Poor old Asher was a bit too crazy! Dr Claire Guest, Medical Detection Dogs co-founder said:
“We work a lot with spaniels and labradors that people have bought as pets, but they end up in rescue because they’re just bouncing off the walls,” before breaking into a broad grin. “That’s just the sort of dog we love. The reason they’re bouncing off the walls is they just want to do and everything they do, they get in trouble for. We give them something to do”.
Dr Guest soon realised that Asher was “a natural” detection dog and he was given the task to see if Malaria had a special aroma. Fate then intervened and Coronavirus reared its ugly head. Asher was deployed to see if there was a chance that dogs like him could sniff out Covid?
It may seem to some that we’re in the realms of fantasy when we dare to hope that dogs can smell out disease…but in fact it just may be possible. Dr Guest says:
“There has long been anecdotal evidence that many, perhaps all, diseases have a telltale odour. Yellow fever, for example, is said to smell like raw meat; tuberculosis starts out as wafts of stale beer, but later becomes more like soggy cardboard with notes of brine. These are just the ones that humans can notice – and compared to most animals, we have an abysmal sense of smell”.
But as any Cocker Spaniel owner worth their salt knows, our furry pals have an excellent and highly enthusiastic sense of smell!
Dr Guest continues: “If a dog comes up to something they like the odour of, they sniff really hard and rapidly, don’t they? You can hear that sniff-rate go up and they’re actually able to push air in and out of their nostrils at slightly different rates. This produces a little vortex that pulls up the volatiles that much more quickly. They’ve also got an ability to push old air out of the slits of their nose, the sides, and pull new air in at the same time. This information goes to two different parts of the brain and these two bits talk. Then they recognise the odour.”
Professor James Logan, head of the department of disease control at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine adds “We could detect a spoonful of sugar in a cup of tea, but a dog could detect a spoonful of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming pools. It’s that level.”
The Covid team are currently working on sample collection. ‘Sterilised socks and stockings made from nylon, which clings to body odours especially well, and face masks have been sent out to around 3,200 NHS staff, who will wear them for a standardised amount of time before returning them to Logan’s lab for analysis’.
All the NHS workers taking part in the trial will be asymptomatic. Professor Logan adds; “We’ll end up with a very high number of samples from people who are uninfected, and a smaller group of samples from people who are infected. And that’s fine. Because, actually, we need a lot of controls. We need a lot of background noise for the dogs to ignore.”
The dogs who are embarking (no pun intended!) on this incredibly important work are certainly a cute bunch! There are six dogs undergoing training under Dr Guest’s supervision. A collection of cocker spaniels and labradors, and one labradoodle called Digby. Asher is the eldest of the bunch.
But, despite his experience in sniffing out Malaria, Asher won’t be deployed in Covid-19 searches, As he’s already been trained to sniff out one disease, it couldn’t be guaranteed which disease he was looking for. However, Asher has helped to confirm that Covid-19 does have its own smell. “Because Asher has more experience, he’ll be able to tell me, ‘There’s definitely a difference here. Let’s crack on,” says Dr Guest. “He won’t go to the final phase, he’ll peel off and a young girl will come in.”
Guest looks over at Asher fondly and whispers, “But we haven’t told him that yet…”