Dogs trained to offer support to troubled US veterans

Yahoo – AFP, Catherine TRIOMPHE, June 16, 2019

US military veteran Michael Kidd and his companion dog Millie leave after a training
session at the Paws of War office in Nesconset, New York -- Millie helps Kidd navigate
the difficulties of post-traumatic stress disorder (AFP Photo/Johannes EISELE)

Nesconset (United States) (AFP) - Michael Kidd, now 84 years old, fought in the Korean War. His young German shepherd Millie helps calm him down when things start to swirl, usually at night.

Harry Stolberg -- a 42-year-old former Marine who served in Bosnia, Liberia and Nigeria -- has a chocolate Labrador named Rocky who wakes him up from his troubled dreams.

And 31-year-old Phil Davanzo -- who carried the bodies of fallen comrades during a hostage rescue operation that went wrong off Somalia in 2011 -- hopes his Rottweiler puppy will soon be trained to support him during his panic attacks.

The three US veterans, who all live on New York's Long Island, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and have sought solace through pet therapy -- namely, a loyal dog to keep them company.

The shelter animals are either trained or being trained to help them through difficult times by Paws of War, an association funded entirely by private donations that then provides the service dogs free of charge.

The group will also train a veteran's dog if he or she already has one.

Veteran Harry Stolberg says his dog Rocky helps him wake up from the nightmares that 

have come after his service overseas in the Marine Corps (AFP Photo/Johannes EISELE)

"The biggest thing is he wakes me up from nightmares," Stolberg says of three-year-old Rocky.

"He can open the door, come in my room, turn on the lights, take my blinders off me... and lick my hands so I wake up."

Rocky, whose 18 months of training were completed six months ago, also helps Stolberg navigate large crowds, which can be triggering.

"If I can't move, he will get me out of that crowd -- he will pick up on that. He will walk around me and look at it and if I don't respond, he will walk away from the crowd with me hooked up to him," he says.

Paws of War -- their acronym is a play on POW, used to signify prisoners of war -- has been active since 2014.

More than 100 dogs have been trained so far, and the therapeutic results for their masters have been significant.

Michael Kidd's dog Millie, seen here, is being trained at Paws of War to help Kidd 

when times are tough -- he says her assistance has led to a reduced need for 

medication (AFP Photo/Johannes EISELE)

Off the meds

Kidd, who suffers from severe PTSD, has been able to reduce his intake of medication thanks to Millie.

At night when things are tough, "she will come over to me, she will put her paw on my shoulder, on my chest, and just give me a big slobber," says Kidd, whose father was in Normandy on D-Day.

"That's just saying, 'I am here for you.'"

Stolberg used to need sleeping pills to get through the night, but not anymore, thanks to Rocky.

"Sleeping was my biggest problem. (...) Now I only have a nightmare once or twice a month, instead of every day," he explains.

"A lot of that is also because I know that when I go to sleep, he is in the room -- he is going to wake me up no matter what."

Rebecca Stromski, a senior trainer for Paws of War whose husband served in 

Afghanistan and Kuwait, says it takes 18 to 24 months to teach dogs what to do when 

a troubled veteran sends distress signals (AFP Photo/Johannes EISELE)

'Quite a process'

It takes 18 to 24 months to teach dogs what to do when a troubled veteran sends distress signals, according to Rebecca Stromski, a senior trainer for Paws of War whose husband served in Afghanistan and Kuwait.

"It's quite a process actually, creating a mutual respect and a connection between the service dude and the service dog," she says.

"Once the foundations are in place and the dog starts feeling if things are going well or not for the veterans, they start to do certain motions when the guys are fidgeting," Stromski explains.

"I can start and cue that behavior and use that as an alert."

In the face of seemingly interminable wars for US military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq, deployments which began in 2001, veterans are experiencing PTSD symptoms on a regular basis.

Paws of War has more requests for service animals than it can fulfill, with 50 veterans on the waiting list, according to the group's co-founder Dori Scofield.

So far, Paws of War has trained more than 100 dogs to help troubled veterans on Long 

Island, and has more applications than it can currently fulfill (AFP Photo/Johannes EISELE)

Both ends of the leash

After running an animal shelter for 30 years, Scofield launched Paws of War after being contacted by veterans returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Those soldiers had become attached to dogs they had found in those countries, but were unable to bring them back home.

Through word of mouth recommendations, the association quickly became a top meeting place for the 75,000-strong veteran community on Long Island, one of the biggest in the United States.

"We get applications every day -- we can't keep up," Scofield says. "I can't train enough dogs fast enough."

She has opened satellite offices in Florida and in northern New York state. She has also launched a free mobile veterinary clinic where veterans can bring their companion animals.

Dogs who might have ended up put to sleep in shelters now have homes, and veterans are rediscovering "a reason to get up every day, get moving, get out," Scofield says.

"It has been just so awesome, helping both ends of the leash."

Doggy diagnosis can sniff out seizures: study

Yahoo – AFP, March 28, 2019

Dogs are awesome (AFP Photo/Astrid Stawiarz)

Paris (AFP) - Dogs can use their remarkable sense of smell to recognise the specific scent of seizures, researchers said Thursday, raising hope that canine carers could one day protect sufferers before a fit takes hold.

Previous tests have shown dogs are able to detect the odours of certain diseases, including some cancers, diabetes and malaria.

There is also anecdotal evidence they can sense that their owner may be about to have a seizure, though this was poorly understood until now.

Researchers in France used five dogs -- Casey, Dodger, Lana, Zoey and Roo -- in a study to sniff out a scent specifically linked to a human seizure.

Dogs' noses have evolved to be highly sensitive, and can detect specific organic 

compounds at a concentration of less than 0.001 part per billion (AFP Photo/OLI SCARFF)

They presented the dogs with a variety of smells taken from epileptic patients, including body odours emitted during calm activity, while exercising, and during an attack.

Casey, Dodger and Zoey all identified the seizure scent 100 percent of the time, while Lana and Roo sniffed out the right sample two goes out of three.

"The results went beyond our expectations by showing that there is indeed a general odour of an epileptic seizure," Amelie Catala, a researcher at the University of Rennes and lead study author, told AFP.

"We hope it will open new lines of research that could help anticipate seizures and thus get patients to seek security."

Dogs are awesome (AFP Photo/Astrid Stawiarz)

Dogs' noses have evolved to be highly sensitive, and can detect specific organic compounds at a concentration of less than 0.001 part per billion.

The most sophisticated current "electronic noses", meant to pick up potentially harmful odours that humans can't smell, have a detection threshold of around 300 parts per billion.

Catala said that while dogs had been shown previously to be able to sniff out chronic diseases, this experiment showed they could potentially diagnose acute health episodes that last just a few minutes.

"The study of odours by the use of dogs constitutes a fast, low-cost, non-invasive, and effective screening method of diseases that can be difficult to identify normally," she said.

The paper was published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.

University of Amsterdam offers puppy love to stressed students

DutchNews, October 16, 2018, By Senay Boztas

JennyC via wikimedia commons

The University of Amsterdam is offering over-stressed students the chance to cuddle up with puppies to relieve exam stress next week, it has confirmed to DutchNews.nl. 

It will have a puppy room available with 750 seats for two afternoons in its library, saying that research demonstrates that a quarter hour of puppy love can lower blood levels of cortisol, and therefore reduce stress during exam week. 

The puppies are being introduced to the students, too, apparently as a vital part of their socialisation training. 

The idea, reportedly, comes from British universities including Bristol and Nottingham. The puppies are provided by agency Catvertise and are costing the university some €400. A total of 160 students will be able to benefit and are being asked to sign up on social media. 

According to the sign up page, the event is already sold out.

A new weapon against sexual assault: Dutch police dogs trained to sniff out sperm

DutchNews, May 15, 2018

Police dogs have many roles. Photo: Graham Dockery

Dutch police have a new weapon at their disposal in the hunt for rapists – a dog which has been trained to sniff out sperm outdoors, RTL Nieuws said on Tuesday afternoon. 

The two dogs have been involved in 80 cases and the trial was so successful that four more dogs will be trained to work in places where sexual assaults have taken place, RTL said. 

In two cases, the dog’s evidence was instrumental in solving two sex crimes – one of which involved a young girl who was knocked off her bike and raped. 

The dogs are able to identify specific sperm up to a week after the incident. This, says RTL, saves on laboratory time because technicians can identify the sperm sample’s dna straight away, rather than test all sorts of different items for potential evidence. 

The sperm dogs are part of a team of 120 sniffer dogs, all trained to focus on specific smells, such as drugs or money. 

Last year, the police abandoned plans to train up sniffer rats. They were going to be used to detect illegal fireworks, fake cigarettes and human bones but the plan was dropped because they could not be made ‘operational’.

Dogs detect breast cancer from bandage: researchers

Yahoo – AFP, Mariëtte Le Roux, March 24, 2017

Assistant cynophilist Patrick Mairet, pictured in October 2016, and his dog Thor
are part of the Kdog project, which aims to train dogs to detect breast cancer
(AFP Photo/PASCAL LACHENAUD)

Paris (AFP) - Dogs can sniff out cancer from a piece of cloth which had touched the breast of a woman with a tumour, researchers said Friday, announcing the results of an unusual, but promising, diagnostic trial.

With just six months of training, a pair of German Shepherds became 100-percent accurate in their new role as breast cancer spotters, the team said.

The technique is simple, non-invasive and cheap, and may revolutionise cancer detection in countries where mammograms are hard to come by.

"In these countries, there are oncologists, there are surgeons, but in rural areas often there is limited access to diagnostics," Isabelle Fromantin, who leads project Kdog, told journalists in Paris.

This means that "people arrive too late," to receive life-saving treatment, she added. "If this works, we can roll it out rapidly."

Working on the assumption that breast cancer cells have a distinguishing smell which sensitive dog noses will pick up, the team collected samples from 31 cancer patients.

These were pieces of bandage that patients had held against their affected breast.

With the help of canine specialist Jacky Experton, the team trained German Shepherds Thor and Nykios to recognise cancerous rags from non-cancerous ones.

"It is all based on game-playing" and reward, he explained.

After six months, the dogs were put to the test over several days in January and February this year.

This time, the researchers used 31 bandages from different cancer patients than those the dogs had been trained on.

One bandage was used per experiment, along with three samples from women with no cancer.

In the first round, the dogs detected 28 out of the 31 cancerous bandages and 

on the second try, they scored 100 percent (AFP Photo/PASCAL LACHENAUD)

Saving lives

Each bandage was placed in a box with a large cone which the dogs could stick their noses into, sniffing at each in turn -- four boxes per test.

The exercise was repeated once with each sample, meaning there were 62 individual responses from the dogs in all.

In the first round, the dogs detected 28 out of the 31 cancerous bandages -- a 90-percent pass rate, the researchers announced.

On the second try, they scored 100 percent -- sitting down in front of the box containing the cancerous sample with their muzzle pressed deep into the cone.

"There is technology that works very well, but sometimes simpler things, more obvious things, can also help," said Amaury Martin of the Curie Institute, citing the many untested stories of dogs having detected cancer in their owners.

"Our aim was see if we can move from conventional wisdom to... real science, with all the clinical and research validation that this entails."

This was the proof-of-concept phase of Kdog.

The next step will be a clinical trial with more patients and another two dogs, but the team is still in need of project funding.

The team believes that one day dogs may be replaced by "sniffing" machines, possibly armies of electronic diagnosticians dedicated to analysing samples that people far from clinics would send them by the post.

In the meantime, Experton said there is little danger of the trained dogs using their new-found skills to accost cancer sufferers outside the lab.

"These tests happen within a very specific work environment," he explained. "In a different context, these dogs are unlikely to simply pounce on random people in the street."

The team says it is the only one to work with breast cancer detection from skin-touch samples.

Other research projects are testing canines' ability to smell different types of cancer in samples of the skin itself, blood or urine, even the air people exhale.

In France, the chances of surviving ten years after a breast cancer diagnosis is about 85 percent, compared to around 50 percent in poorer countries.

Blind couple left stranded in woodland after attack on guide dog

DutchNews, December 7, 2015

A guide dog in action

A blind couple were abandoned in woodland after their guide dog was attacked by another dog on Sunday, local broadcaster AT5 reports. 

The couple, named as Jasper and Marion, were left stranded in Diemerbos with their dog Ian, who was bleeding and unable to lead them to safety, after the other dog’s owner fled the scene.

‘The owner shouted at us to call our dogs to heel, but his dog went straight into a fight with Ian,’ said Jasper. ‘He [the owner] had difficulty separating his dog from Ian. We spoke to the man but he ran away. Marion tried to go after him but he got in his car and drove off.’

Ian was given emergency treatment by a vet but it is unclear if he will be able to resume his work as a guide dog.

‘Incidents like these can cause long-term anxiety towards other dogs,’ said Peter van der Heijden of the Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation (KNGF). ‘That would make Ian unsuitable for guide work. Guide dogs need to be 100% dependable in their work.’

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Dogs prove successful at sniffing out bowel cancer

DutchNews.nl, March 24, 2015

Dogs being trained to sniff out bowel cancer can already recognise its smell after less than a year in training, the Telegraaf reports on Tuesday.

The five cocker spaniels are being trained by the Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation KNGF and have sniffed 380 samples of human faeces including some from patients with bowel cancer. They are already able to pick out the 20 tubes containing faeces from bowel cancer patients in 80% of attempts. 

The KNGF is working with the VU medical centre in Amsterdam on this pilot project to train dogs as medical detectives. According to the VU, it is an important step in the early diagnosis of bowel cancer which is discovered in 15,000 people a year.

‘Bowel cancer is mainly diagnosed following a colonoscopy,’ the VU’s professor Henk Verheul says on the KNGF website. ‘This is uncomfortable for the patient and leads to late diagnosis. It would be fantastic if we could use specially trained dogs to search for cancer by sniffing faeces or breath.’ 

The intention is to train dogs to recognise other forms of cancer in the future.

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The Huffington Post, Ryan Grenoble, 01/19/2014

Guide dogs aren't only for people who have difficulty seeing, they're also for those "who have seen too much."

That's the premise illustrated in a powerful new ad from the Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation, a nonprofit in the Netherlands that trains and places assistance dogs where they're needed -- including with veterans suffering frompost-traumatic stress disorder.

The spot highlights one veteran enduring a nightmare on an unknown battlefield, and the touching response of a canine companion in helping him cope.

Though research on how service animals help veterans deal with PTSD is still in its early stages, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledges the presenceof a trusted dog has numerous emotional benefits and helps reduce stress.

Related Article:

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(RNW)

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