Tag: UC Davis

RIP Kabang, Hero Dog Who Lost Her Snout Saving 2 Girls’ Lives in 2012

As cousins Dina Bunggal, 11, and Princess Diansing, 3, crossed a street in the Philippines in December 2011, a motorcycle sped toward them. Seemingly out of nowhere, Bunggal’s Shepherd mix, Kabang, jumped in front of the bike, saving the girls’ lives.

Kabang also survived her heroic act, but suffered a gruesome injury in the process: Her snout was torn off when the motorcycle struck her head-on. Remarkably, she was able to adjust — for example, she figured out how to eat by using her paws to scoop food into her mouth.

To prevent Kabang from developing a life-threatening infection, she needed reconstructive surgery so her wounds would close, and there weren’t any vets in the area with the expertise to perform such a complicated procedure.

Fortunately, veterinary surgeons Boaz Arzi and Frank Verstraete of the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital at the University of California, Davis, offered to reconstruct Kabang’s upper jaw using state-of-the-art equipment. Philippine Airlines donated round-trip airfare for Kabang to be flown to Northern California. The cost of her surgery, which was over $20,000, was mostly covered by donations from animal lovers around the world.

Treating Heartworm, Cancer and a Missing Snout

But before reconstruction surgery could begin, UC Davis veterinarians discovered two more serious problems: Kabang had heartworm disease as well as a malignant vaginal tumor that needed to be removed. Fortunately, both were successfully treated. A few months later Kabang was free of both heartworm and cancer, and finally ready for surgery.

The first surgery repaired her dental work. The second one, which took five hours, closed the wound on her face using skin flaps brought forward from the top and sides of her head. Her nasal openings were also reconstructed and stents were placed inside them to form nostrils.

In 2013, seven months after she’d arrived at UC Davis, Kabang was ready to return to her home in the Philippines. In the meantime, she received several awards honoring her heroism, including the Animal Hero award from the American Red Cross.

Living Happily Ever After

I wrote several stories about Kabang for i Love Dogs, and have wondered in the years since then about whatever happened to the hero dog. Kabang spent the next nine years enjoying a healthy life. When her owner, Rudy Benggal, died in 2015, she was taken in by her longtime veterinarian, Dr. Anton Lim, who had accompanied her to UC Davis in 2012 and cared for her during her stay there.

On May 17, Lim announced that the 13-year-old hero dog had died peacefully in her sleep. “I last played with her at 4 p.m. and was supposed to feed her again her dinner,” Lim told the Inquirer, adding that Kabang had never lost her voracious appetite. “I found her motionless with no external sign or prior sickness,” he said.

Kabang’s permanent resting place will be beside a statue being erected in her honor in Zamboanga City.

“Rest in peace, sweetheart,” the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine wrote on its Facebook page Monday.

Photo: Care for Kabang/Facebook

Two Cancer-Sniffing Dogs to Join UC Davis Medical Staff

Early detection of cancer — the second leading cause of death for people in the United States — gives patients the best chance of survival. Unfortunately, many of the screening methods available today detect cancer at later stages, when treatment is less effective.

Fortunately, in the very near future, dogs and their extraordinary senses of smell will help develop ways to detect cancer in its earliest stages.

Dogs have been trained to detect breast, lung, ovarian, prostate, thyroid and other cancers, all with amazing accuracy: 98 percent for both breast and prostate cancer, for example. Even untrained dogs have been able to sniff out their dog moms’ breast cancer and dog dad’s brain and skin cancers.

For the first time ever in the U.K., it was announced earlier this month that a clinical trial is using dogs to sniff out prostate cancer.

And for the first time ever in the U.S., it was announced at a news conference today that dogs trained in the ability to sniff out cancer will be using those skills by working with the medical staff at the University of California, Davis.

“For the past number of years, we have been developing very high-end, expensive new tests to try and detect the presence of cancer,” said Ralph de Vere White, director of the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, in a news release.

“Dogs have been doing this, detecting disease in the urine of people suspected of having bladder cancer, for example. This work marries sophisticated technology with low-tech, yet sophisticated, dogs’ noses to see if they can help us identify the molecules that differentiate cancer from non-cancer.”

In a year-long training program, two 4-month-old puppies — Alfie, a Labradoodle, and Charlie, a German Shepherd — are working with doctors, veterinarians and animal behavior specialists to develop their abilities to identify the scent of human cancer in saliva, breath and urine samples.

Dina Zaphiris, director of the InSitu Foundation, a nonprofit that trains dogs to detect cancer, is training Alfie and Charlie. She has already trained more than two dozen dogs to detect the disease. Almost any dog can be trained to detect cancer, she said, but she prefers to work with German Shepherds, Labradors, Poodles and herding breeds, “because of their work ethic.”

Alfie and Charlie’s cancer screening work will start early next year with a clinical trial to establish the effectiveness of this new approach.

“Despite all the advances of modern medicine, we still can’t reliably detect many types of cancers in their early stages,” said Peter Belafsky, a professor of otolaryngology who frequently deals with cases of advanced cancer.

“Our new canine colleagues represent a unique weapon in the battle against cancer. It’s the first of its kind at UC Davis, and the dogs’ incredible talent for scent detection could offer us humans a real jump on diagnosing cancer much earlier and thus save many more lives.”

Photo: UC Davis Health System

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