Can dogs help dogs by detecting cancer? Specifically Hemangiosarcoma? Your Shiloh can also help by participating in this study. Learn more and sign up for this seminar.
Dr Cynthia M. Otto, DVM, PhD DACVECC DACVSMR ~ Professor of Working Dog Sciences & Sports Medicine at University of Pennsylvania, School of Veterinary Medicine.
May 18, 2024 – 4:00 PM
As owners of Shepherds, you are probably all too familiar with hemangiosarcoma, the devastating cancer that affects the liver, spleen and heart of so many dogs. We have previously shown that dogs can be trained to detect an odor in blood samples associated with human cancer (ovarian, pancreatic, sinonasal inverted papilloma) and other diseases as a path to early identification. With generous funding from the AKC-CHF, we are going to determine if dogs can help other dogs by detecting the presence of of hemangiosarcoma based on a blood sample. We are collecting blood samples from dogs diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma, dogs with noncancerous conditions of the heart, liver or spleen and healthy dogs (older than 4 years of age). We will be able to collect samples from your dogs and information from you to help train our dogs. We will not be able to tell you if your dog is at risk as this research is just beginning, but we hope that your dogs will help advance the science so we can outsmart this sneaky cancer.
Dr. Otto, a tenured Professor of Working Dog Sciences and Sports Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Veterinary Medicine is board certified in veterinary emergency medicine/critical care and canine sports medicine/rehabilitation. As executive director and founder of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center (www.vet.upenn.edu/WDC ), she oversees fitness and medical care of the program’s detection dogs, provides rehabilitation and conditioning for police and other working dogs and conducts vital research on and by detection dogs. With over 140 peer reviewed articles, reviews and book chapters, she is an internationally recognized expert in both emergency medicine and working dog science. She was Pennsylvania’s 2002 “Veterinarian of the Year”, received Ohio State’s Alumni Recognition Award (2006) and Distinguished Alumnus Award (2008), AVMA’s Bustad Companion Animal Veterinarian of the Year (2018), Mark Bloomberg Award (2019) and Asa Mays DVM, Excellence in Canine Health Research award (2021).
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