Dogs can save lives with their noses; Here's how

May eNewsletter

Author: Arloa Chadwick

Red Jasper is currently training one of our residents, Gandalf the dog, to sniff out coconut. This is not only fun right now, but is a huge step for the future. It is our hope that one day, Red Jasper might rescue stray dogs, train them to sniff out common allergens such as: Gluten, dairy, nuts, and maybe more.

Gandalf waiting to detect for us!

It may seem like a bit of a hassle to bring a dog everywhere. Sometimes it is, but dogs are often- not always but often- more efficient than allergy detecting machines. For example, the machines used to test gluten free products usually are set to only detect twenty parts per million of gluten. This doesn’t seem like a lot, but for people with celiac even the slightes contamination can be dangerous. A trained detection dog however, can usually detect even the slightest contamination. A well trained detection dog can even detect if the takeout container has a lining produced with gluten- which they sometimes do. Or if someone touched the gluten-free food after handling gluten-full bread without washing their hands thoroughly.

Quiz

• And the answer to the last quiz was… heifer!

  Even though the word “cow” is commonly used as a term for all bovines, male and female, it actually means a female who has had at least one calf. A steer is a castrated male bovine. A doe is a female deer, goat, or even rabbit! Thank you to everyone who participated!

• Here’s our next quiz, this one is Mother’s Day themed. The answer will be revealed on the first Friday of next month. Please take a guess by clicking what you think the answer is in the poll and/or commenting your guess below. We love to hear from you! Don’t worry, the votes are annonyomous, so we can’t tell who said what.