Pets in the city
The Healing Power of Pets
By Gini Sikes
The ash blonde hair, warm smile, and the passion for purple jackets and oversized jewelry make it hard to picture 57-year-old Sharon Sakson reporting from war zones in Israel and Nicaragua.
Now known in the dog world as a famous breeder, judge and also an expert on Brussels Griffons (the little dog Jack Nicholson tossed down a garbage chute in As Good As It Gets), Sakson was kidnapped in Lebanon in 1982 and suffered posttraumatic stress for years. She recovered and transformed through the therapeutic comfort of dogs, a subject she writes about with authority and a sense of wonderment in her new book, Paws and Effect: The Healing Power of Dogs (Random House).
During her career as a high-octane TV news producer, Sakson saw Lech Walesa rise from an unknown factory worker to the president of Poland and watched rockets soar into the skies above Cape Canaveral. Yet nothing quite compares to the awe of witnessing the almost mystical ability of canines who can motivate disabled children to walk, predict seizures and heart attacks, and even detect cancer.
“I’d seen dogs on TV who could detect cancer in urine samples,” Sakson says. “The dog lover in me wanted to believe it, but the reporter in me was skeptical. My mother died of breast cancer, so writing the book became a personal journey for me.”
Sakson traveled from her home in New Jersey to Florida to meet Dr. Armand Cognetta, a specialist in skin cancer, who trained a former bomb-sniffing dog, a Standard Schnauzer named George, to sniff for melanoma. Seven volunteers who’d been tested for cancer, but hadn’t learned their diagnosis, lay on a low table while George smelled them. George correctly indicated that five patients had cancer and one did not. However, in one man’s case, George and the cancer lab disagreed: the Schnauzer detected cancer, the test results did not.
Three months later the same man was retested. This time the results showed positive for Stage 1. “George found cancer at stage zero,” Sakson says. “Before any lab could find it. Cancer-detecting dogs have proven more accurate than MRIs, biopsy, x-rays, mammograms or fiber optic scopes, any currently know methods.”
The reason, Sakson says, is the extraordinary power of a dog’s nose. A scientist at the Sensory Institute of the University of Florida, Dr. James Walker, did experiments that demonstrated dogs could pick up a scent at one part per trillion — as small as a single drop in a swimming pool. That makes them about 10,000 times better at detecting smells than their human counterparts.
In each story Sakson tells, the bonds between dog and humans transcend the ordinary, with the usual roles reversed: the animal is the caretaker, and sometimes, a lifesaver. A Scottish Terrier named Kyle constantly licked his owner’s jaw until she went to the doctor, where they found she had advanced jaw cancer. Removing half her jaw saved her life. A Shih Tzu brought his elderly owner blankets when she fell, then barked incessantly until neighbors arrived to check on the commotion.
Abby, Sakson’s own Whippet, saw her owner through the rough period of emotional 
recovery from PTSD. “I had counseling and the usual treatment, but nothing was more effective than coming home every day to my Abby. There’s that unconditional love and acceptance that dogs always provide. She healed me.”
Combat vets can back Sakson up. The program Paws for Purple Hearts uses dogs to help heal the often-shattered psyches of soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq as well as aid those with physical disabilities.
You don’t have to suffer a life-threatening illness to benefit from dogs’ healing abilities. Dog owners are healthier than the general population, according to Sakson. She says her entire canine clan, in Princeton, NJ, are all healing dogs. “Studies have shown dogs lower our blood pressure, reduce heart rate, and induce the relaxation response. They keep us active with walks and exercise. And they can improve our social lives, because even people who are complete strangers will talk to each other about their dogs.”
Much of the scientific community has yet to embrace the power of our canine pets to help heal mind and body. “For starters, scientists don’t want dog hair all over their labs,” says Sakson, laughing. “I don’t think it matters if we label what these dogs do…’science’ or ‘magic’ – it works.”
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Elaine Mensa August 22nd, 2009, 2:53 pm
Really cool article, I read this book and was quite surprised at the amount it covers. It is one of the most in-depth books on dogs I’ve read. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
Martha August 27th, 2009, 1:45 pm
This is truly a wonderful book by a gifted writer.Thank YOU for your positive review!