Episode 5 Operation Ouch!

-Are you ready for our Ouch Snips?

-Snip!

-Ouch!

-Exactly!

What do these three dogs have in common?

Well, they're all medical professionals.

Meet our medical doggy heroes...

They're all specially trained to help people with medical conditions.

First up, it's Daisy who's here to help us with today's experiment.

Because your breath can reveal a huge amount about you,

it can be the first sign of many illnesses

and, like your fingerprints, your breath is unique -

no-one else has the same breath.

-Smells like doggy snacks.

-No, but I did find some lovely biscuits

on the floor on the way in.

-Were they in a bowl?

-Yes.

Did the bowl say "Daisy" on it?

Yes.

HE SIGHS

Everyone has bad breath at some point, even Daisy.

But even if your breath isn't bad, it still has a smell

and it's the smell that contains information about you

and your health.

In fact, there's a whole range of medical conditions

that can be detected on your breath.

And Daisy is a specially trained smell dog.

Time to see Daisy in action.

Now, we've laid out three samples of breath here,

and one of the samples is from a patient with a serious illness.

Can Daisy find it?

Daisy's been trained by Claire to identify smelly molecules

related to different illnesses.

And she's done it in just six seconds!

That is incredible.

There was no debate, she didn't even have to check one of the samples,

-she knew.

-As soon as she smelt that odour, she sits down

and tells us she's found it.

But Daisy's not the only dog who puts her incredible nose to

good use.

Time for our next doggy hero.

Meet Shirley.

Dogs have around 200 million smell receptors,

whereas humans only have around five million,

making dogs superior sniffers and also life-savers.

Shirley's nose has been trained to help Rebecca.

Rebecca has type 1 diabetes.

This means that her body doesn't produce a chemical called insulin,

and amazingly, Shirley's incredible nose

can sniff out when there are problems.

Insulin's job is to make sure you have just the right amount of sugar

in your blood.

When your body doesn't produce insulin,

blood sugar gets out of control.

So if your blood sugar is too high, you inject insulin.

And if it's too low, you have to eat something sweet.

Rebecca has to take insulin four times a day,

but her blood sugar levels can be very unpredictable, making her ill,

which is where Shirley comes in.

This is something that humans could never do.

She's able to detect changes in Rebecca's breath

as soon as they happen, and usually that's before Rebecca has even

the slightest idea that anything's wrong.

And Shirley has a very special way of letting Rebecca know something

is wrong - by licking her!

Rebecca's mum then tests her blood and injects more insulin

or gets help before things get dangerous.

What would have happened before you had Shirley?

I would have had the ambulance once or twice a week.

So since you've had Shirley, how many times have you had

-an ambulance?

-Like, once in three years.

Now that's what I call a real four-legged hero!

And we've got one more incredible medical doggy to meet.

This is Nala. She is a miracle worker at keeping patients calm

and lowering stress.

Nala has worked as a pet therapy dog for 15 years and is known

as Dr Dog.

-# Snoop doggy dog. #

-BARKING

Animal therapy dogs, like Nala, need to be calm, obedient

and really intelligent.

How does it make you feel when you see Nala?

Happy.

And, Poppy, how do you feel? Cos you come into hospital a lot

to see your younger brother.

Yeah, I think Nala helps you relax.

Nala, do you feel happy when you see Spike?

-WOOFING:

-Yes!

There's no doubt that this professional pooch can put a smile

on your face, but can Nala really have a physical effect

on a patient's health?

Let's put Dr Dog to the test!

To help me, here's Miracle, who's in hospital

having kidney dialysis treatment.

So what I want to do is, while you're having your dialysis,

I want to measure your blood pressure.

And then we're going to bring in Nala, the dog,

and we're going to see what happens to your blood pressure.

A blood pressure test is a simple way to check

if a patient is stressed.

At the moment, it's 116 over 67,

which is in normal range.

But let's see if Nala can make Miracle even more relaxed.

And amazingly, after just a few minutes with Nala,

Miracle's blood pressure has gone down, meaning she's more relaxed

and less stressed.

So we've shown you three amazing medical dog heroes,

doing things that humans just couldn't.

Well, let's just hope they don't put us out of a job!

-See you next time!

-Bye!

-Bye! Bye!

-Bye!

-Bye!