Superbug-sniffing spaniel kept busy at Vancouver hospital

Angus, a two-and-a-half year old English springer spaniel, tugs at his leash, pulling handler Teresa Zurberg down the hall at Vancouver General Hospital.

He zeros in on a hospital bed where a sample of the superbug Clostridium difficile has been hidden as part of a demonstration.

After eagerly pushing his way under the bed, Angus gets down on his bellyand wags his tail excitedly.

"Alert," says Zurberg The C. difficile has been located. The search, which began about 20 metres away, only took15 seconds.

Zurberg and Angus have been working at VGH since November as part of a pilot program.

"So far, Angus is averaging one to two finds per day, so he's got somewhere between 50 and 70 alerts right now," said Zurberg, who brings Angus to VGH four days a week.

"He does all of the common areas in the hospital. He does in the units, we do all the supply room," she said. "We do some patients's rooms but we don't do patients themselves."

Superbug-sniffing spaniel put to work at Vancouver Hospital

8 years ago

Duration 0:57

Superbug-sniffing spaniel put to work at Vancouver Hospital

No stranger to C.difficile

Zurbergpersonally experienced a nasty C. difficileinfectionabout three years agoafter wounding herself with a piece of metal while working on a fence.

While she was on antibiotics, she contracted the infection.

"I was in the hospital for a week, and I lost about 20 pounds...so it was horrible," she said. "I was lucky that I was young and healthy to begin with, because for the elderly it could be fatal."

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Zurberg described wretched diarrheafor days on end.

"Nothing stays in. Even days after you haven't had food, you still have diarrhea. I don't know where it comes from," she said. "It's uncomfortable.Your stomach hurts.You've got fevers.You just feel horrible."

Zurberg is a retired Canadian Forces Army medic whonow trains detection dogs. Her husband, whoworks as a nurse at VGH, heard about a similar project in Amsterdam and asked her if it would be possible to train one of her dogs to sniff out C. difficile.

Before long, Angus was put to work.

More superbug-sniffing dogs a possibility

B.C. Health Minister Terry Lake was at VGH on Monday to watch Angus in action and to present the spaniel with his "working dog"badges.

"They're able to clear rooms and they've found [C. difficile]on the bottom of furniture and pieces of equipment, and then they send in the disinfections team, which could be people or it could be the little UV robots," said Lake, who saysthe program cost isabout $150,000.

"When you think about the impact C. difficile can have on patientsand the cost of trying to clean up an infection in a hospital, that's a very good value for money," he said.

"If it is as effective as we believe it is, then I imagine we could see this kind of a dog detection system in other hospitals around the province."

Zurberg, who is in the process of training another springerspaniel, Dodger, said she's been having conversations with U.S. hospitals who are interested in getting similar projects rolling.

And it's possible the dogs can be trained to sniff out more than just C. difficile.

"Right now, we're just focusing on C. diff., just because our project's so new, but really it opens the window we're only limited by our imagination as to what we can get these dogs to start looking for," said Zurberg.

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