Queen Camilla celebrates 15 years of Medical Detection Dogs in Bucks
The Queen is a patron of the charity working to support vulnerable individuals
An organisation working with dogs to advance illness detection and support vulnerable individuals was celebrated by Queen Camilla on their 15th Anniversary.
Medical Detection Dogs, based just outside of Milton Keynes, has been working to train dogs for medical purposes for the past 15 years.
The charity has for patron no other than the Queen herself, who was, today, given a demonstration of the key work the dogs do.
Head of Assistance Dog Programme, Simone Brainch, said: "It's such a fabulous day, an opportunity to celebrate but also demonstrate some of the work the dogs are doing at the moment."
They have a natural skill at being able to smell, but they also have to have that aptitude because if you think of an assistance dog, they're going out into public, they need to be well-behaved..."
Each dog is carefully selected to either assist a person with an illness or detect a range of different infections or diseases.
From a young age, the dogs are evaluated on their sniffing abilities, with personality playing a big part as well.
Ms Brainch said: "They have a natural skill at being able to smell, but they also have to have that aptitude because if you think of an assistance dog, they're going out into public, they need to be well-behaved, but also need to enjoy it as it's a busy world out there."
The dogs they train have to tick a number of boxes before they start their life-saving journey.
Once a puppy is selected, volunteers will train them for the first two years of their life, a crucial part of their upbringing.
"For individuals that may have blackout conditions, it is really reducing the amount of injuries they may have consequently had if they had no warning..."
From there, the organisation will work with partnering research bodies and medical professionals to put their valuable skills to use.
In the case of assistance dogs working to support individuals suffering from blackout medical conditions, the dogs will give their owner a warning sign ahead of a medical emergency.
Ms Brainch said: "The key thing that the dogs support these individuals with is giving them that early indication that of an episode they would otherwise have no symptom of."
"For individuals that may have blackout conditions, it is really reducing the amount of injuries they may have consequently had if they had no warning and had just fallen to the ground. "
The second and crucial body of work the organisation focuses on is medical detection, with specialised dogs already proving successful in detecting long-term illnesses such as cancer, or infections such as UTIs.
Work is ongoing to introduce infection detection dogs into communities, in the hope to relieve pressures from the NHS.