By David Monti, @d9monti (c) 2021 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved (26-May) The Peachtree Road Race will host the USATF 10-K Championships for men and women on Sunday, July 4, the Atlanta Track Club (ATC) announced today. Tokyo Olympic marathoners Aliphine Tuliamuk, Jake Riley and Abdi Abdirahman are slated to compete. Tuliamuk was the USA Olympic […]
By Christopher Spata and Tampa Bay Times •
Published May 1, 2021 •
Updated on May 1, 2021 at 10:20 am
Three days a week, Buffy greets visitors at the entrance to Doctors Hospital of Sarasota. If they grant permission, she sniffs their feet seeking a whiff of active COVID-19 infection.
Few decline the offer when they see the yellow Labrador retriever with a wagging tail. People generally don’t love going to a hospital, said CEO Robert Meade, but, “Who doesn’t love labs?” Be prepared for the 2021 hurricane season! Download our
our mobile app for iOS to get the latest forecasts and alerts.
Buffy was trained by Palmetto-based Southeastern Guide Dogs as part of a four-dog pilot program for scent detection. Southeastern Guide Dogs has for years trained service animals and provided them for free to disabled veterans and people with vision loss. Scent detection, however, was new territory.
The original plan for 2020 was to train dogs to detect heightened levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. That could let the dogs know when to wake up military veterans suffering night terrors, or get them out of a stressful situation before a panic attack strikes.
The coronavirus pandemic derailed that plan, but opened the door to another. Small, early studies on dogs trained to detect COVID-19 in Europe - though still unproven - showed promise. Southeastern decided to give it a shot.
The four dogs selected were not the top of their class. In fact, they’d flunked out of Southeastern’s guide dog training.
(Tribune News Service) Three days a week, Buffy greets visitors at the entrance to
Doctors Hospital of Sarasota. If they grant permission, she sniffs their feet seeking a whiff of active COVID-19 infection. Few decline the offer when they see the yellow Labrador retriever with a wagging tail. People generally don’t love going to a hospital, said CEO
Robert Meade, but, “Who doesn’t love labs?” Buffy was trained by
Southeastern Guide Dogs as part of a four-dog pilot program for scent detection.
Southeastern Guide Dogs has for years trained the service animals and provided them for free to disabled veterans and people with vision loss. Scent detection, however, was new territory.