The Dog Kept Nosing the Same Spot on My Wife. It Was Cancer.

I am not a superstitious man. I spent thirty years as an electrician and I believe in things I can measure. But I owe my wife's life to a dog and a hunch I almost talked myself out of, and if telling this saves even one person, then it is worth sounding foolish.

We adopted Rosie about a year before this happened. She was a rangy shepherd mix from a rescue that pulled dogs out of high-kill shelters down south. She was a good dog, calm, a little anxious around thunder, devoted to my wife Deb in particular. Followed her around the house. Normal dog stuff.

Then Rosie developed what we thought was a weird habit. She became fixated on Deb's left calf. She would nose it, and lick at it, and if Deb was sitting Rosie would put her head in her lap and go straight for that one spot, over and over. There was a small dark mole there, one Deb had had for years, nothing she had ever thought about. Rosie would not leave it alone. We laughed about it at first. We said Rosie had picked a weird thing to obsess over. Deb would push her off and Rosie would wait a minute and go right back to it.

This went on for two months. It escalated. Rosie started whining when she did it. A couple of times she licked at the mole so persistently that Deb had to shut her out of the room. And I remember the night it tipped over for me, because Deb said, half laughing, that if she did not know better she would think the dog was trying to tell her something. We both went quiet after she said it. Neither of us laughed.

I had read something once, years before, one of those articles you skim and forget, about dogs detecting cancer by smell. It came back to me that night and would not leave. I brought it up the next morning and Deb rolled her eyes, but I could tell it had gotten into her head too. It took me another week of gentle nagging to get her to see her doctor about a mole that, to human eyes, looked completely unremarkable.