Woman Convinced Dog Diagnosed Her Breast Cancer
Published: October 6, 2006
A woman in Westminster is thanking her dog for helping her find the breast cancer she will be treated for next week.
There has been literature about dogs’ ability to detect cancer since back in 1989 and Heidi Robertson is convinced it can happen.
Robertson, a 62-year-old grandmother, has always loved her big, furry Newfoundland named Tess, but said she’s realized their connection in the past weeks.
“My dog would come up to me and sniff me around my chest area and she would put her nose, push her nose into my right breast,” Robertson said.
She tried to ignore Tess but the pooch persisted.
“And she would be very insistent like ‘mom do something,’” Robertson said.
There was no lump and no family history but Robertson decided to get a mammogram after 9 years of not having one.
“You know alarm bells went off inside of me,” Robertson said. “I knew then something is going to happen.”
More tests revealed cancer in her right breast.
“I knew it because Tess told me, she let me know something is wrong and thank God we caught it early,” Robertson said.
Since then, Robertson said Tess never has to beg for treats.
“She’s just an amazing dog,” she said.
Heidi will have a mastectomy next week and then she’ll find out what other treatment she may need.
In 1989, there was a published case of a dog sniffing out a malignant mole on a woman and in 2004, scientists in the U.K. reported trained dogs could sniff out bladder cancer in urine.
Most recently, a study showed trained dogs could detect lung and breast cancer by smelling people’s breath.
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