Our very special guest today is “dog trainer to the stars”, Dina Zaphiris, who has over 25 years of knowledge and experience-based dog training work. Serena, Vinnie and Dina discuss dog behavior and training, body language and using treats correctly. Most importantly, they discuss Dina’s work with the In Situ Foundation, as a primary trainer and researcher of cancer sniffing dogs for the early detection of cancer. Serena talks about her fund raising effort for this amazing cause.
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WHAT DO THE DOGS DO?
- Dogs are not trained to go up to a person and smell cancer on them
- They are given samples: breath exhaled concentrate, plasma or urine
- Cancer cells give off different waste products These waste products smell different to a dog
- This is in the research stage, but the work is very exciting with a high accuracy level and holds the promise of a non-invasive way to detect early stage cancer
WHAT HAPPENS
- Hypothetically, you take a tube and exhale 20 to 30 times into it
- That sample would be placed with other healthy samples
- Samples are screened by 5 highly trained dogs that have been trained thousands of times for 6 months to a year for accuracy
- In a 2003 study, the dogs were 99% accurate for early detection of lung cancer and 88% accurate for early detection of breast cancer
FACTS ABOUT DOG’S SENSE OF SMELL
- Dogs have 300,000,000 scent receptors in their nose…humans have 5,000,000
- Their nostrils work independently…one nostril can be used for respiration and the other for sniffing
- The part of the dog’s brain that analyzes smell is 40% larger than the same part of the brain in human
SERENA MEETS DINA
- Serena and Dina start discussing the In Situ Foundation
- Serena recently lost her dear friend Anne to Ovarian Cancer…Because Ovarian Cancer is known as the “silent killer”, Anne was not diagnosed until for was almost stage 4
- Serena is signed up for a 50 mile running race and decided to do something to help this amazing organization
- She is raising money for In Situ. You can donate by going to Google and searching “Serena runs 50 miles”.
- There is a place to donate. Her goal is to get 1,000 people to donate $1 per mile