There’s a lot going on in the world. In addition to riots and shootings, the continued threat of the Cronizzle, and most of California being on fire, we lost a great woman – the Notorious RBG – recently. All in all, not a great year. While it would be easy to get down about all these problems, we still have one very important thing going for us: There are still dogs and they’re still happy to see us.
It’s been known for a while that petting a dog (or a cat) for 10 minutes can reduce your stress. All they ask for in return is food, water, and the entire damned couch. Or maybe that’s just my dogs. We also know that their sense of smell is on the order of 10,000 times more sensitive than ours. Or, to put that in different terms, that means a dog could sniff out a single drop of something in two Olympic-sized pools.
In addition to reducing our stress and taking up all the space on the couch, dogs have been trained to use those keen sniffers to detect cancer, malaria, and other maladies. Now, researchers in Finland have trained dogs to sniff out the Cronizzle – that’s Covid-19 for those of you who aren’t hip and with it.
A couple of the major problems in dealing with Covid-19 are the potentially long burn time of two weeks before someone even knows they have it and asymptomatic carriers who will never know they have it. Pair those things up with an airborn, highly virulent bug, and you’ve got a recipe for a pandemic. While various tests have been kajiggered up in labs around the world, they still take time and money to produce results. A dog can be trained to react to the smell of the virus as it comes out in our sweat and can produce results nearly instantaneously. All they ask in return is that you get off the damned couch so they can really stretch out and would it kill you to get them a blanket and pillow?
You can read the original article here. While you’re out perusing the Internet for more dog-related activities, be sure to check out No Dog Left Behind, the wonderful folks who helped rescue dogs who were left homeless in the wake of Hurricane Laura and Bob The Dog, who’s just too damned cute for words.
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And now your moment of Zen.
Eric Lahti 
Even though I am a cat lady, I love dogs too. If circumstances were different, I’d have a pooch as well because my two cats aren’t able to take up the whole damn couch. Everyone should know the comfort of a furry pet, they are so good for the soul. Thanks for this post, Eric, your tongue-out, happy pooch gif made my day.
Thanks Eric, no question that dogs are a man’s best friend. And decidedly clever in sniffing out the dreaded virus, like I guess they do at airports for drugs. We’re baby sitting my son’s cat for the next several days and she does bring down the stress of everything. Very calming. And kudos to all who rescue dogs, and those who adopt rescue dogs. Thanks for co-hosting this month. Great #WATWB post – and the zen gif ..
Our dogs can be a handful sometimes, but I wouldn’t trade them for the world.
Dogs (and cats) are the best stress-reducers for sure. I do think I have the solution for couch-hogging though. Couch trundles – roll out couches hidden under the regular couch. Of course, humans would be delegated to the trundle seating because everyone knows who is in charge of these things.
Virus sniffing dogs and rescuers are worthy of our praise and support – thanks for sharing the info. And thanks for co-hosting this month.
I’m not sure the trundles would be enough. One of our dogs gets his nose out of joint if he doesn’t have pillows on the couch to sleep on. 🙂
Dogs are amazing! My dog is keeping me busy with long walks in the fresh air, clearing out those nasty germs and keeping us both healthy 🙂
There is nothing like an early evening dog walk. We have hounds, so it’s more like run to a place and sniff for five minutes before running to another place and sniffing, but it’s always fun.
Dogs are so amazing.