Press

Karen Pryor Clickertraining (KPCT) is underwriting National Public Radio broadcasts in Tucson AZ beginning January 11th on KUAZ 89.1 FM/1550 AM. The underwriting, will help spread the word in the local community about Karen Pryor's ClickerExpo, "where pets and people learn together" January 27-29th at the DoubleTree Hotel at Reid Park in Tucson. "It's great to be able to sponsor a valuable show like Morning Edition and other great programming on this NPR affiliate", said KPCT president, Aaron Clayton. "NPR broadcasts and clicker training appeal to people who know the value of good observation; I'm sure we'll get a few more people and their dogs introduced to the power of clicker training through affliation with KUAZ and NPR".

This is absolutely amazing to me. Dogs have been clicker trained to detect breast and lung cancer by smelling the breath of patients! And they're really good at it, too! Standard, humane methods of dog training employing food rewards and a clicker, as well as assessment of the dog's behavior by observers blinded to the identity of the cancer patient and control samples, were used in the experiment. The results of the study showed that dogs can detect breast and lung cancer with sensitivity and specificity between 88% and 97%. The high accuracy persisted even after results were adjusted to take into account whether the lung cancer patients were currently smokers. Moreover, the study also confirmed that the trained dogs could even detect the early stages of lung cancer, as well as early breast cancer. The researchers concluded that breath analysis has the potential to provide a substantial reduction in the uncertainty currently seen in cancer diagnosis, once further work has been carried out to standardize and expand this methodology.