Our Canine Guardian Angels

Dogs are characters, sometimes clowns, and can be great friends. And they're trainable to be more than a one trick pony. Tonight CBS 60 Minutes aired a segment about dogs that can smell bladder cancer -- work in the UK recently published in the BMJ. Dogs were trained to smell the chemical trace of a specific cancer and picked it out from a set of 6 dishes with over a 40% accuracy -- far beyond a chance occurrence. Curiously, the dogs kept going to one sample the hospital believed was not diseased which turned out that it was. Another life potentially saved by a furry friend that the physicians had missed.

This calls to mind a response to the 2005 question on the edge.org that asked notable authors about things they believed that they couldn't prove. Joseph Ledoux, a neuroscientist at NYU, chose to answer this question by saying he believes that animals have feelings and other states of consciousness. He then goes on to say that "we can't even prove that other people are conscious, much less other animals." Recently, my whippet underscored Dr. Ledoux's viewpoint.

My wacky whippet has an unnatural affection for toilet paper, preferably still on the role and mounted in its proper place. She knows this is unacceptable behavior, but like Roger Rabbit, she just can't help herself when the white fluffies are within her visual field. Last week I was at the sink shaving when she trotted into the bathroom, snatched the paper roll from its holder, and wheeled about ready to head out for delirious moments of frenzied shredding. But ... she saw me standing there in the doorway. She stared at me for about 10 seconds -- a long time -- then turned her head, purposefully dropped the roll into the open toilet, snorted, and pranced out of the room. Feelings? Other states of consciousness? That's as clear a "if I can't have it, you can't have it" as I've ever seen.