Meet the dogs being trained to sniff out bowel cancer

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

The medical detection dog charity began a ground-breaking study in 2024 to teach seven pooches how to detect tumors simply by sniffing urine samples 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 that they can smell bowel cancer – and now face a phase of complicated ‘blind tests’ before the results are official.

The charity hopes dogs will provide an accurate and more sensitive method of detecting bowel cancer in the early stages faster than humans, which could improve healthier outcomes and help save lives.

All bowel cancer dogs and 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 such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. [POTS].

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

“The study of bowel cancer is new to us, but the discovery is not.

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

The training program included early scent training, learning the “game” in which they had to detect a disease in urine sample containers.

Sample sizes get smaller, and dogs eventually have to learn to sniff out disease in samples from patients with other conditions.

Pot samples from the University of Hull Teaching Hospitals and are placed on interactive metal stands created by the Open University, which are fed into a computer. Each sniff is recorded and the dogs tell humans with a signal – such as standing – if they detect cancer.

The dogs are then rewarded with treats and petting.

Gemma said: “We need to prove that they can detect bowel cancer. From our point of view, every stand has a sample of urine, and they smell every stand.

“When they smell the scent, they give us a signal like sit down or stand up to show the smell.

“If they identify a positive sample, which takes less than 10 seconds, they will get lots of treats, cuddles and love.”

Gemma said each pup also spends time bonding with their trainer and having “a lot” of fun in the process.

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

“At the moment, we’ve smelled 1ml of urine per pot – which, as you can imagine, is a minimal amount.

“A lot of people who have given samples will also have other diseases that they will have to smell.”

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 organisations.

Gemma said: “We’ve just welcomed our second litter of puppies from our dogs so we’re hoping to get more of them ourselves.”