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Trivia: Going to the Dogs

By The MedHunters Ezine Team
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For thousands of years, humans have enjoyed a special relationship with dogs. Dogs provide companionship and affection; some dogs also work for us – guarding homes and property, herding livestock, etc. And dogs can assist us medically:

    A letter published in the April 1, 1989 edition of The Lancet, by doctors in the Dermatology Department of King's College Hospital in London, reported that a patient's dog constantly sniffed at one specific mole on her leg, ignoring all other moles, which prompted her to come in to have it checked. The mole turned out to be malignant melanoma. Intrigued by stories of melanoma-sniffing dogs, Dr. Armand Cognetta, a dermatologist in , tested the melanoma-sniffing abilities of a dog named George. The dog was right 99% of the time. (There have been other similar experiments as well.)
    Dogs have been used since the 1980s as "seizure dogs" (also known as "seizure alert dogs" or "seizure detection dogs") to alert individuals to the onset of an epileptic seizure and/or to stay by their owner when they have a seizure.
    And according a summarization of research found on the Delta Society (a non-profit group dedicated to the use of companion animals for promoting human health) website, some other health benefits of dogs include: lower blood pressure and lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels; better psychological well-being; better coping and adjusting abilities. (Also see our articles Paging Dr. Dog , Therapy With Trapper , and A Nurse's Pet Project .)

Of course, dogs

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