Dogs are considered "Man's best friend" and in addition to being great company and helpful service dogs, one group of dogs in the UK is helping to detect cancer. While cancer is a complex disease to treat and can require seeing many health care providers, part of the team could be these patient pups.
The dogs are being trained to sniff urine samples from patients, and from those smells, determine if the patient has cancer or not. Essentially these dogs are pretty much the first canine bio-sensors. Dogs have one of most sensitive noses of any animal. They can detect certain odors down to parts per trillion. This is why they are relied on for sniffing out explosives. Using this ability to advance health and medical research can be just as life saving as bomb sniffing dogs already are in the security arena.