Colleen Ferguson says she knew something was wrong when German Shepherd Inca started obsessively smelling her breath before frowning
A woman says her dog saved her life – after sniffing her breath. Colleen Ferguson, 70, says she first suspected something might be wrong when her German Shepherd Inca started obsessively smelling her breath.
After weeks of the then two-year-old pet sniffing at her mouth and frowning, Colleen visited her GP to get her teeth checked out and some tests done – which all came back negative. However, Inca, who was bought to practise competitive obedience, would not stop the habit, so a few months later she decided to pay for a full body scan just in case.
Colleen, from Headcorn, Kent, then received a call from her doctor to say that there was a “golf ball-sized tumour” in her left lung, which was later revealed to be stage one cancer. The mum-of-two says it was a total shock, as she had just expected Inca’s sniffing was related to her gluten intolerance, and that maybe the dog was sensing some bowel or gut differences.
The former science and maths teacher said: “Her behaviour towards me changed, she just started homing in on my mouth. Every time she could get a sniff of my mouth she would frown.
“She just had this focused intent on my mouth, and you couldn’t push her away until you had done an outbreath. When she got that she would give me such a look and walk away. In no way did I expect lung cancer at all. It was such a shock because I am a non-smoker, and because I taught biology, I was very anti-smoking.
“I had absolutely no symptoms at all apart from being tired, but I thought that was just because I was coming up to 60 and still working with teenagers.”
Luckily, there was a cancellation on the waiting list, so Colleen was able to have surgery to remove her tumour later that year, in June 2015, and she didn’t need any further treatment. Just over 10 years later, she is now trying to make the most of her life, quitting her teaching job to do a master’s in creative writing and becoming a published author.
The mum believes that her life was saved by her beloved dog, and she doesn’t know how she would have fared if they hadn’t caught it so early. She said: “The surgeon said to me at the time ‘we never catch it at stage one, your dog has saved your life. Now go away and do what you want.’
“I was just so lucky. Every day is special with her. To catch it at stage one is just remarkable. I don’t know how I would have survived with radiotherapy and chemotherapy. She saved me a lot of fuss.
“It was meant to be. I often think of the chance that she is the one I picked, and how easily it could have been a different dog. I nearly got a golden retriever. What if I hadn’t got her and it had gotten to stage four?
“She needs celebrating and people need telling to listen to your dog. They tell you a lot more subtle signals than people realise.”
Inca, now 13, has since been trained as a recovery assistance dog to help Colleen as she started to have panic attacks and anxiety following the health scare. The author says that having the support of her dog has hugely helped her, and all she suffers with now is a small amount of breathlessness.
She said: “Wherever I am she is there. Dogs give us a lot more comfort than we realise. I was very scared. Especially when they said it was first stage cancer, because I didn’t know when that would change. I didn’t sleep very well at all once I was given the diagnosis.
“It is that horrible fear, and I think that is how I got the anxiety and loss the confidence to go out and about which Inca gave me back.”
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