A dog's superior sense of smell is helping to detect cancer at its earliest stages. Researchers take blood plasma from cancer patients and place them into one of eight canisters for the pups to sniff out.

The goal is not for dogs to sniff cancer out in people, but rather to help scientists perfect an electronic nose that will. Executive Director of PennVet Working Dog Center, Dr. Cindy Otto says while it is possible for a pet to sense certain cancers in their owners, a machine is more reliable.

"My dream is that dogs confirm that the electronic nose is working and we get that out. If we can help recognize this cancer early, we will save lives. We just need to get the machines as good as the dogs," Otto said.

Researchers say an electronic nose will be able to essentially do the same thing as a trained dog's snout - sniff for stage one ovarian cancer, a disease that can now only be detected in later stages.

A dog's sense of smell has been estimated to be 10,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive than humans, according to ABC News. 

The Seal Beach Police Department has adopted a shelter dog from the Seal Beach Animal Care Center. “Missy” is a five-year old German Shepard mix and has been adopted by the personnel at the Police Department as the official “comfort dog.”

“We see dogs being walked by the Police Station all the time, so the idea for adopting a dog has come up from time to time” said Commander Phil Gonshak. The Police Department approached the Shelter and asked if there was a dog that would be appropriate. Missy had been adopted by another family about a year ago, and was returned last January. The Shelter employees suggested Missy because of her gentle and calm temperament. She began staying at the Police Department on trial basis in March.

A Committee was formed and several City employees donated money, food, toys and other items to assist with her care. At first, Missy would come the Police Station during the day and be returned to the shelter at night. Missy became attached to the Police Department employees, so she was allowed to stay the night under the care of the West-Cities Communications Dispatchers. Missy is now a permanent resident of the Police Station and she is a big hit with visitors.

Recently, a group of Girl Scouts visited, and Missy was a wonderful ambassador. “Our hope is that by adopting Missy, we will inspire others to consider adopting from a shelter” said Chief Joe Miller.

If you are interested in adopting a cat or dog from the Seal Beach Animal Care Center visit their Facebook or Instagram page, or their website at https://www.sbacc.org/.

This article was released by the Seal Beach Police Department.

 Missy became attached to the Police Department employees, so she was allowed to stay the night under the care of the West-Cities Communications Dispatchers. 

Therapy dogs in schools can perform wonders: The animals relieve students’ stress, help kids learn to read, and even boost test scores and attendance.

To reach these goals, educators must focus as much on the animals’ needs as they do on the comfort of students, says Jennifer VonLintel, a counselor. Her golden retriever, Copper, serves as a therapy dog at B.F. Kitchen Elementary School in Colorado’s Thompson School District.

“Therapy dogs can do great things, but administrators need to have someone running the program who understands risk and stress levels for the dogs,” says VonLintel, who operates the website School Therapy Dogs. “A school can be a complex environment for a dog.”

Administrators should start by bringing in outside volunteers with dogs, rather than having the school adopt a dog of its own. Administrators should be wary of handlers who use shock collars or other negative training methods because they can stress the dogs and prevent them from bonding with students.

According to a Bloomberg study, South Africa’s stress rates are at number two in the world. Okay, we’ll take that with a pinch of salt, but there’s certainly no doubt we South Africans have a lot to be stressed about. And apparently, we’re a nation of workaholics according to another global study by Ipsos and Reuters, which showed that more than half of us do not take our annual leave! This makes the office environment a pretty tense place.

Some companies are taking this into account and looking to ways of de-stressing staff and their boosting morale. Enter the four-legged, fluffy stress reliever – pet dogs!
For example Mars Multisales Africa has held a Take Your Dog To Work week this week. Research has shown that pet owners have ‘healthier physiological responses to stress’ and the company is aiming to ‘use the health benefits of dog ownership to achieve an ideal work life balance – a top determining factor for a great place to work in South Africa’.

 AGATA SKORA, manager of vendor management/toys at Amazon, and her dog, Manu, a 11/2-year-old Vizsla, peek around the corner of her Seattle office cubicle 

SEATTLE — Casually dressed techies, blue badges flapping, dart past construction workers during morning rush hour at the global headquarters of Amazon, the juggernaut accelerating the growth of our on-demand culture.

A company food stand dispenses free bananas to commuters streaming between the sleek Amazon office towers that have invaded a light-industrial district on the shore of Seattle’s Lake Union. Gardeners in a glass and steel sphere step back to admire a rare corpse flower in bloom.

Through it all weave hundreds of dogs, whose presence may be the ultimate workplace perk — especially in Seattle, where canines outnumber kids. More than 7,000 dogs are registered to come to work at Amazon’s offices here, compared with 6,000 a year ago.

That amounts to a dog-person ratio of 1:7 at the mother ship, where about 49,000 people are employed. A host of dog-oriented enterprises, including doggy day-care and trendy pet-friendly bars and restaurants, contribute to the beehive of activity in the neighborhood where Facebook and other tech firms are also opening offices.

On a recent day in Amazon’s 12-storyApollo building, a Havanese named Cooper accepted a customarysnack from a receptionist at the lobby counter, his owner hurrying upstairs to teleconference with London. There was scarcely time to sniff Sparky, a Shih Tzu-Maltese trotting to an elevator, or Murphy, a goldendoodlerunning out on his person’s coffee break.

“Nobody knows me,” says Shefali Duhan, Cooper’s human companion and a sales team program manager, but “everybody” knows Cooper.

Duhan had jumped at the chance to get a pet to bring to work after she transferred from Amazon in Hyderabad, India, which doesn’t allow dogs. Now she wouldn’t think of leaving Cooper at home.

“You can’t focus at work if you know there’s someone at home you have to take care of,” she said.

Countless studies have extolled the benefits — for employees and companies — of having pets in the workplace. British researchers have even associated dogs in the office with reduced employee turnover, which is notoriously high at tech companies competing for talent. News reports have suggested Amazon has struggled with turnover, but a company spokeswoman declined to provide figures.

“The benefits of dog-friendly workplaces may manifest as lower rates of absenteeism and higher worker morale and productivity,” according to a 2017 paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.