Which is good news: this is just the first stage for Billy, who is on a fast-track training course to learn to sniff out Covid-19. He’s not working with the actual virus, of course, but a training sample, which will teach him to do that job.
Trainer Jess with Belle, a two-year-old fox red labrador. Photograph: Robert Ormerod/The GuardianIt all started when a friend of Guest’s told her about her pet dalmatian sniffing persistently at one of her moles. The friend went to the GP, had the mole removed, and found she had a malignant melanoma. “From then on, I thought, if I can do anything in my life, I want to prove that dogs can smell cancer and disease,” says Guest. Later, she would have her own personal experience: a dog in training started to behave strangely around her, nudging her and staring at her as if concerned. Guest also went to the GP, was referred, “and to cut a long story short, I was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer”. It might sound more Take A Break magazine than the British Medical Journal, and Guest admits she has had to put up with a lot of scepticism along the way. But she points out that, back in 2004 she worked on the first scientific study that showed dogs can detect human bladder cancer, which was in fact published in the BMJ. Recently, she’s worked alongside Professors James Logan at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and Steve Lindsay of the department of biosciences at Durham University, among others, on a successful project to train dogs to identify malaria.Guest wasn’t surprised. “Dogs have 350m sensory receptors dedicated to olfaction, humans have 5m. Some dogs can work with parts per trillion.” Their research has indicated that these dogs can detect minuscule traces of odour, about one part per trillion, or the equivalent of a teaspoon in two Olympic swimming pools. When Covid-19 happened, Guest got to work again with Logan and Lindsay, both of whom I speak to by phone. First, though, there’s another dog to meet: Spencer, a golden retriever labrador cross, two years old. He came from the Guide Dogs charity, where they had noticed he was keener to use his nose than his eyes, (not what you want in a guide dog). Spencer has been training for a couple of weeks; he’s a slower learner than Bobby, says trainer Mark, certainly less bouncy. A bit of a plodder, I think, though he’ll get there in the end. And he does. Spencer correctly picks out the cups with the odour. Good boy.Celebrate Your Pet at Every Age. Everyone loves a new puppy or kitten, says Dr. Becker. “They’re wildly kinetic, and humorous. An older pet is thinner, bonier. Their coats aren’t as soft, they might have bad breath.” But, like people, a pet’s needs change with age. They may be less active, preferring a leisurely stroll to a rollicking tug-of-war. “Our old retriever, who’s blind, still wants to retrieve.” Adapting to their changing needs will ensure your old friend remains a healthy and happy member of your family.
The dogs in the photos, by Robert Ormerod, are not the same as the ones I’m meeting today. That’s because Ormerod visited Medical Detection Dogs before I did – and the dogs he photographed are further along in their training, in another part of the building where I can’t go because they are working not with a training odour (usually just a little piece of a dog’s favourite toy) but with the smell of actual Covid-19.
Asher, Belle, Tala and Florin training at Medical Detection Dogs. Photograph: Robert Ormerod/The GuardianWhen the pandemic began, Logan got in touch with Guest, whom he had worked with on the malaria project. “I sent her a text saying, ‘I’ve got this idea of deploying dogs to detect Covid. What do you think? Do you think it’s crazy?’”Pet proof your house. To keep your pet healthy you should research what household products and foods can harm your pet. Make sure these are kept in secure locations so your pet cannot get into them.
James Logan of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Claire Guest, co-founder of Medical Detection Dogs. Photograph: Robert Ormerod/The GuardianIn the stage that comes after the one I’m witnessing, the dogs pass along a line of metal stands, one of which will hold a positive Covid sample (sometimes there will be no positives, as there will sometimes be in the real world). Then the tests go double blind: not only are the dogs unaware which – if any – of the stands hold Covid-19 samples, so, too, are the handlers and everyone at Medical Detection Dogs.
Where is all this heading? “We are not looking to replace clinical testing,” Logan says. “We are keen to use dogs in very specific circumstances, where we need to get through a lot of people quickly. Airports, sports stadiums, train stations, universities, care homes.” Guest points out how useful it would have been to deploy Covid dogs at the airports early on in the pandemic, with all those flights coming here, bringing in so-called “super-spreaders” .
They’re not quite at the stage of releasing their results yet, but aim to publish as soon as there is enough data to robustly show how well dogs can detect coronavirus. There will be several independent reviews before anything is put into practice. But everyone – Guest, Lindsay, Logan, the trainers – is positive about the way the first phase, the proof-of-concept study, is going. “There is no doubt now that Covid has an odour, and the dogs are detecting it,” says Logan. The dogs will soon start to train with people, and in different situations – outside, in queues, crowds, including at an airport, hopefully Heathrow – says Logan. “It will be about getting the dogs working in an environment where there will be tannoy announcements and other distractions.” They hope this will happen early next year.
With all the brilliant news about vaccines and their efficacy, won’t the Covid dogs be redundant before they even get to work? Logan mentions “a readiness platform, for the next one. We know what to do, what samples we need, and how to collect them, so we can deal with this quicker next time.” If necessary, there could be a team of dogs, trained and ready to go, to sent out to an emerging virus’s country of origin.
Talk of “the next one” and “next time” is sobering. But Lindsay wasn’t surprised when this pandemic happened, and is already thinking about a similar outbreak in the future. “We have seen an increasing number of viruses and infections from animals spilling over to people,” he says.
Belle sniffs a training odour not containing the actual virus. Photograph: Robert Ormerod/The GuardianINTERESTING FACT ABOUT YOUR PET: Having a pet in the home can actually lower a child’s likelihood of developing related allergies by as much as 33 percent. Children exposed early on to animals tend to develop stronger immune systems overall.
Lindsay also points out that it’s going to take months to vaccinate everyone, and we don’t yet know how long immunity will last. “I hate to be a bit of a downer on this, but it might be that, as with flu vaccines, you get this genetic drift. We might need a different type of vaccine – it might always be behind.”
Guest knows how hard it is to roll out a mass vaccination programme: shehasn’t been able to get a flu jab this winter. “I think there’s going to be work for the dogs to do,” she says. Medical Detection Dogs is also collaborating with a quantum physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on developing electronic sensors to do the same work as the dogs, sniffing out disease (specifically prostate cancer), but that’s not currently up and running. Don’t stand the dogs down just yet, in other words. Speaking of which, I have one more to meet: another golden retriever labrador cross, Honey. She’s also two, but is a little further along in her training, working with clothes draped over the backs of chairs, arranged in a line. Honey walks with her trainer Jess down the line, sniffing. She’s at each chair for only a second or two; the same speed at which she would walk down a line of people at passport control, perhaps. At one chair, she sits – that’s how she indicates the item with the tell-tale odour. Is she right? Of course she is. And again, and again. She’s still working with a training odour, but Honey is ready to start on the real thing. Honey is adorable: calmer than Billy, cleverer than Spencer. When she sits, she looks up with a furrowed brow that appears to signify genuine concern. That’s better than a texted result, isn’t it? I can’t think of a nicer way of finding out you have Covid-19, than a golden dog sitting down with a frown?