Farewell to the best friend who saved my life
LAST month, the veterinary oncologist delivered the news I’d been dreading.
Having been diagnosed with a cancerous tumour in her chest just five days earlier, Daisy, my fox red Labrador (pictured above), had taken a turn for the worse. I was desperate to do anything to keep her alive, until the oncologist took me to see her.
Hooked up to an IV drip, she was too weak to do anything but stare at me sadly with the big brown eyes that had stolen my heart 13 years earlier.
Her drip was replaced with medication that would put Daisy to sleep, and I held her in my arms as I told her how sorry I was that, after everything she’d done for people with cancer — including me — she’d succumbed to it, too.
Daisy wasn’t just my soulmate; she was at the forefront of Medical Detection Dogs (MDD) and the first at our charity to sniff prostate cancer urine samples correctly.
Not only that, but in August 2008 she detected a lump in my left breast. She’d started pushing at my chest with a look of anxiety and fear. Afterwards, my left breast felt strangely bruised, and I felt a lump in it. A biopsy confirmed I had cancer.
At the age of 44, I wouldn’t otherwise have received a diagnosis for months. Without Daisy, I wouldn’t be alive.
I met Daisy in 2005 when she was eight weeks old and instantly fell in love. My little shadow during the day, at night, she slept in my bed, waking me in the morning with a nudge. When my 17-year marriage came to an end in 2007, she helped me cope, pawing the crook of my arm, as if to say: ‘Don’t worry, life will get better.’
I was, at the time, already researching the relationship between dogs and smell.
I’d studied psychology at Swansea University, where I specialised in animal behaviour. Then I met a lady whose Dalmatian had become so fixated on a mole on her calf that she went to her GP, who diagnosed a malignant melanoma.
I teamed up with Dr John Church and our study, in the British Medical Journal in 2004, was the first in the world to prove not only that cancer had a smell, but that dogs could detect it.
MDD started in 2008 with Daisy and my cocker spaniel, Tangle, sniffing urine samples for bladder cancer.
Most people who visited us were moved to tears after watching Daisy at work, and in 2014 her achievements were recognised with a Blue Cross Medal, awarded to heroic pets.
Daisy kept her extraordinary sense of smell, but became arthritic and retired in 2016. She remained active, and I wasn’t worried when I took her for a routine check last month.
Yet the vet detected a lump in her mammary glands. She was too old to have invasive surgery, so I chose palliative chemotherapy.
I’d hoped it would allow her to reach her 14th birthday in August. But four days later she collapsed.
Back in hospital, she was lethargic, her lower lip wobbled and her nose no longer twitched as I approached.
For two days, I still hoped she’d survive a few more precious months, until I was told the awful news that her condition had regressed.
I can’t imagine a future without Daisy, but knowing her work has the power to save thousands of lives will offer me comfort as I try.