Best Puppy Ever Detects Owner's Breast Cancer

If you are currently pleading with a roommate/landlord/significant other for a puppy, print this off and stick it on the fridge: Turns out Troy, a Doberman pinscher who competed in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show earlier this month, alerted his owner to a malignant lump in her breast.

Presumably, that secured him a lifetime of sleeping on the bed whenever he wants.

Yahoo! Shine talked to owner Diane Papazian:

“One night he was curled up between us in bed. He kept nuzzling up against my left side.” Troy’s persistent nosing triggered an allergic reaction. “I itched myself, and then I popped up in bed and said, ‘Holy cow! What’s this?'” She felt a lump in her left breast that was already three centimeters in diameter.

She got it checked and, sure enough, it was malignant. But they caught it early enough for a double mastectomy and chemo, and now she’s cancer-free. Papazian believes if it weren’t for Troy, the outcome might’ve been different: “If the dog had come a month later or if we hadn’t taken him, I don’t know what would have happened.”

“People get scared of Dobermans, but he’s got the sweetest personality,” she added.

It might sound a little scientifically sketchy, but there’s actually serious research on the subject. There’s a research team at UPenn, for instance, working with dogs to detect ovarian cancer. And one thing’s for sure: A team of specially trained cancer-sniffing puppies would certainly be a marked improvement, emotionally, over a radiology center.