One woman in Pennsylvania, Breanna Bortner, credits her dog, Mochi, for alerting her to her breast cancer before she even knew that anything was wrong, the New York Post reported.
In June 2023, 31-year-old Bortner saw her cockapoo, Mochi, behaving strangely. Generally a cuddlebug, Mochi was obsessed with her right breast, sniffing, pawing at, and nudging the region with uncharacteristic insistence. Bortner was also disturbed to see her sister-in-law’s cockapoo, Gunner, carry out similar actions.
Although Bortner had been feeling fatigued over the past year, she hadn’t suspected anything serious. However, while scratching a mosquito bite near her breast, she discovered a lump. Remembering stories of dogs detecting cancer through scent, Bortner felt uneasy about Mochi’s behavior.
Encouraged by her worry, Bortner made an appointment, and physicians soon identified her with stage 2B triple-negative invasive ductal carcinoma, a highly aggressive type of breast cancer that doesn’t react to standard hormonal therapies.
Bortner commented on how fast the cancer had grown, “That’s how fast and aggressive this triple-negative breast cancer is,” she explained. “It went from non-feel-able, non-detectable to a physical lump within three months.”
Breast cancer is the second most prevalent cancer in American women, next to skin cancer. Approximately one woman in eight will develop it sometime in her lifetime. Detection at an early stage enhances survival to as high as 89% when cancer is found before it has spread, but those odds plummet to 31% if the cancer has invaded other parts of the body.
Following her diagnosis, Bortner underwent 16 rounds of chemotherapy and a double mastectomy. Looking back, she believes Mochi’s sensitivity to her condition led to the timely detection of her cancer. “We really underestimate how smart [dogs] are just because they don’t talk and they can’t communicate to us, but their actions obviously show us the things that they’re tuning into or are aware of,” she said.
Scientific research has advocated for the view that dogs are able to detect cancer. A study conducted in 2019 revealed that dogs could identify samples of blood from cancer patients at a 97% accuracy level. Other studies have established that dogs are able to detect various types of cancer, such as prostate, breast, cervical, and lung, in some cases before conventional medical investigations.
For Bortner, Mochi was not just her early warning system but also an emotional companion during her treatment. “I was sobbing all the time and he did not appreciate that. He was extremely concerned about me. He actually became my healing buddy. He was a higher purpose for me.”
By last spring, Bortner had received the encouraging news that she was cancer-free. In the same way that he had been beside her when she received her diagnosis, Mochi was present to rejoice at her recovery. “It’s pretty cool to see it come full circle and for him to be there from the time I found the lump all the way through finding out I was cancer-free,” she said.
While Bortner is keeping busy with her recovery, she still gets scans every three months to check for recurrence. In the meantime, Mochi, who got used to having her around all the time, has developed separation anxiety, a new difficulty that they are working on with a trainer.
Bortner’s tale not only points up dogs’ incredible instincts, but also demonstrates the potential contribution of developing technologies to early cancer diagnosis. For instance, a TikTok user recently attributed saving her own life to her Oura ring, a smartwatch-style wearable that monitors health metrics, a device that flagged her for early lymphoma symptoms by identifying unusual body temperature patterns.