[lurker]

I'll bet they can..

Steve Werner suspected his health was in trouble even before his golden retriever, Wrigley, started sniffing around. His symptoms were vague back in June -- occasional ringing in his ears, a general feeling of unease. His doctor couldn't pinpoint a problem. Tests came back negative.

Then in July, Wrigley started to behave strangely.

Every day when Werner would curl up next to his beloved canine at his Brentwood, Mo., home, she would turn, focus on his right ear and sniff.

"I thought it was just a friendly sniff," Werner said. "But after four or five days, I realized she seemed to be focusing on something. At some point, I noticed she was always sniffing at the opening of my right ear."

One day, Werner was watching TV when a feature about cancer-sniffing dogs grabbed his attention. What he heard propelled him back to his doctor's office.

An MRI revealed a brain tumor the size of a Ping-Pong ball that had spread into the inner canal of Werner's right ear -- the very ear Wrigley had been sniffing.

Werner, 40, had a rare nonmalignant tumor called acoustic schwannoma. If not caught in time, it could have caused a stroke or permanent facial paralysis.

He had surgery in Los Angeles in February to remove it and has been recuperating at home.

Because of their keen sense of smell, canines have long been used to sniff out guns, bombs, cadavers and illegal drugs, among other things.

Dogs also have been trained in medical settings to detect impending epileptic seizures or identify tuberculosis in undiagnosed patients.

Now, researchers are studying the effectiveness of dogs in detecting cancer.


snip...

At one time doGs were credited with the ability to detect 28,000 different scents.

The rest of the report:
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/living/14629635.htm