Unexplained powers in animals

from BBC News 27 july 2007

The Magazine answers...

A cat has apparently "predicted" the deaths of 25 residents in a nursing home in the US. It seems fanciful but can pets detect illness or even death?

Oscar displayed sudden affection for dying residents
The residents of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre in Rhode Island would be forgiven for getting a little anxious if Oscar was to curl up next to them.

Not generally friendly to patients, this show of affection has been used to warn families that their loved one has not long to go

Sounds far-fetched? Animal behaviour experts in the US say Oscar is probably smelling a chemical given off by the body..

Rescue dogs are the best!
I'll tell you the story of our Lab/Akita mix.
It's kind of a new behavior...But he is my wife's personal diagnostician.
My wife has some blood clotting issues, they often start in her legs.
DVT's they call them. More than once a piece of clot broke off, and went to her lungs..an embolism.
She could have died. Many people do. My wife has survived 3.

We noticed something though. When her leg would become painful...Our big guy would put his nose right up against her leg. Not where the pain was, but in another location. We just thought he was sensing her pain, and being nice to her..
However...The pain got so unbearable, we went to emergency...Sure enough an ultrasound scan revealed the deep clot. Right where our dog was putting his nose. He smelled the blood maybe?

A few months later, he did it again...This time she wasn't in as much pain...But we scheduled with an imaging center then next day. Again..his nose was right on the money. Exact spot...We got it early, and avoided a potential embolism.

This happened one more time, and he was right on the money again. Coincidence? I dunno.

But this is what closed the deal for me. She was having similar pains..in the same locations as before.
But Leo the dog, could not have cared less...We went to the imaging center again, just in case.
This time, it was just a surface bruise..with no Deep Vein Thrombosis...Leo was right!

He's a special critter in our house.

I have an Auto-Immune disorder where sometimes I have a flare up in my joints or eyes so bad that I cannot move without severe pain. We have a pitbull named Roadkill (a totally different story!) that I noticed would pay particular attention to either of my arms or legs or eyes and within hours the flare up would happen. I now pay attention to him when he does this so I know to get my wheelchair ready or a sling, or finish up whatever I am in the middle of. He also "guards" me from all the other animals when this occurs.

Love that dog like crazy and he has even saved my grandmothers life. She has alzheimers & dementia and we took care of her for a few years till she got REAL bad. But one time she was in the back yard and somehow got beyond the fenced area and into the woods behind the house and got lost - she thought she was back home in WV. We could not find her anywhere. Finally because Roadkill was going absolutely nuts in the house I let him out and he took us directly to her. And not where he went in a beeline and we just followed where he disappeared, what he did was go a little ways, stop and wait for us to catch up, go some more and wait again, and he was impatient too - his tail swinging so hard his whole butt swinging with it! We found grandma close to passed out from the heat.

To this day I consider him a hero.

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