New Training Consortium: Leveraging Our Experience to Expand Our Reach

As part of our canine scent detection program, we are providing mentorship for other researchers and dog trainers working to train dogs in scent detection.This work is supported by a $100,000 two-year research grant from the prestigious Robmar Foundation.We are expanding our work in developing the Human-Dog bond, building on our prior work with ovarian cancer to also include lung cancer and breast cancer. This establishes an important scientific requirement facing the field of canine scent detection in human health: replication of prior work by different groups working with different populations of patients.We are providing educational and mentorship support to other researchers and trainers involved in training dogs to use their sense of smell in evaluating human health, leverging our more than thirteen years of experience with canine scent detection, expanding our reach beyond what has already been achieved within our own group. As we move forward with our own research projects, we wish to provide significant mentorship to other teams doing the same type of work. In our mentorship of other teams, we provide:

• Mentorship (helping other teams turn their visions into reality with concrete project design)
• Scientific support (helping other teams write proposals, analyze data, and publish results)
• Training support (helping other dog trainers become better scent detection trainers), and
• Collaborative support (helping other organizations with project management and data auditing support).

Our goal is to expand our reach through this mentorship and research and to help other groups spread the word through publication in scholarly journals and through media exposure.So far, we've provided mentorship to the following groups and institutions:

Anna Vikko, Dog Trainer (Kuopio Finland)Asociación Humanitaria Para la Proteccion Animal de Costa Rica (AHPPA) (Heredita, Costa Rica)Bellamica Pictures (Las Vegas, Nevada)Canine China Search and Rescue Organization (Beijing, China)Children's Hospital (Boston, Massachusetts)Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia)Dog Training Center for Search and Rescue (Slovenia)Dutch Police Forensic Service (Zeeland, Netherlands)Falco K9 Academy (Newcastle Co-Down, Northern Ireland)Guide Dogs for the Blind (San Rafael, California)Hawaii Canines for Independence (Makawao, Hawaii)In Situ Foundation (Los Angeles, California)Institute of Cancer (Lima, Peru) Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, Massachusetts)Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, Massachusetts)Norwood Hospital (Boston, Massachusetts)St. Elizabeth's Hospital (Boston, Massachusetts)Thoracic Cancer Research and Detection Center Sheba Medical Center (Tel Hashomer, Israel)Tufts University (Boston, Massachusetts)Ulster Hospital (Belfast, Northern Ireland)

HOW YOU CAN HELPClick here to make a gift (of any amount) to help support this project.