It has been said that dogs are very smart and very perceptive animals. I firmly believe this to be true. Allow me to explain why I have come to change my mind about these precious creatures.
When I was a little girl (and my family can tell you this), I couldn’t stand dogs of any type. I was absolutely, deathly afraid of them. I would refuse to be in the same room as a dog. I used to refuse to go outside whenever I was at my sister’s house because I knew her dog was there in the yard. I could never figure out where this unnatural fear of canines came from. I had never been attacked by a dog before in my life. Cats, yes, but I never feared them. Go figure.
As I got older, my unnatural fear of dogs subsided, and I have grown to respect them. I still don’t really feel all that comfortable around them, but at least I can be near them and not totally freak out. Now I think they’re wonderful.
Anyhow, I saw a story on “Unsolved Mysteries” once where they profiled some dogs who could detect cancer in humans just by going up to them and sniffing them. Their trainers would place several lumpgs of human tissue (or something like that) close together, and would inject one of the lumps with cancerous cells. The dogs would sniff the air, and every single time they did the test, the dogs would calmly walk toward the lump with the cancer cells, and would not move from that spot. The trainers would even move the cancer lumps to different spots. Never fooled the dogs. Not once. I thought this was simply amazing, but I didn’t think this could actually happen in real life. But that was before Peaches came along.
Peaches is a wonderful, wonderful Chihuahua owned by my friends Richard and Tipton. She is a precious, precious dog, but she can be a little diva sometimes. That dog is about 13 years old—she is most definitely temperamental! Every time I would go over to Richard and Tip’s house, I would see Peaches roaming around, barking at something or somebody. She’s getting up there in years, as I said, so she’s gone deaf, poor thing, and won’t hear you call out to her. She always seemed to like to bark at me, but she never tried to do anything to me. Then one day, her attitude toward me seemed to change.
My friend Boston and I have birthdays that are close together, so we decided to have a joint birthday party at Richard and Tip’s house. Of course, you know Peaches had to be roaming around. I didn’t see her right away. But after walking around for a few minutes, I felt a tiny ball of fur at my feet. I looked down and I saw two big brown eyes staring back up at me. “There you are, Peaches,” I said to her.
I figured Peaches would start barking at me again and be on her way. But this canine diva surprised me. Everywhere I walked, whether it was inside or outside, Peaches was hot on my trail. She kept sniffing me and licking my legs. And if I sat down, she kept trying to jump in my lap. “What is up with this dog?” I asked. “I don’t know,” someone would say. “Maybe she’s in heat or something.” And she was possessive, too. Anytime someone got near me, she would growl. Not a high growl, but a low-pitched one, one you could barely hear. Wow, Peaches. Wow. She was like my personal guard dog that night. She never, ever left my side and never tried to stop sniffing me. What an amazing dog.
I never really thought about that night, until I was at a party a few months later. People started talking about their dogs and about how the dogs were very perceptive. It suddenly dawned on me—this party and Peaches’ antics occurred on the 19th of August—a full five days before I had received my cancer diagnosis. Holy crap. Peaches was able to detect the cancer and knew I had it before I did. Wow, that’s all I could say. Told you Peaches was an amazing dog.
*kathy*
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