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Service dogs are real life heroes
BeAmazed | by /u/Lost-Cow-9386 | 113 comments | 2026-09-05T17:17:00+00:00 Central
Comments
| /u/BeAmazed-ModBot Did you find this post really amazing (in a positive way)? If yes, then UPVOTE this comment otherwise DOWNVOTE it. This community feedback will help us determine whether this post is suited for r/BeAmazed or not. |
| /u/MsModusOperandi Their service lamb is ADORABLE 🥰 |
| /u/Still-Investment-832 I had an English cocker and after her first haircut as a puppy she seemed almost indistinguishable from a baby goat. |
| /u/Tiny-Plum2713 Would look less like a lamb if they didn't cut it's tail off |
| /u/waitagoop Sheep are also born with long tails. They tie a tight elastic band around it and it eventually falls off. |
| /u/PhantomAngel042 For those who didn't know: sheep tail docking (though still cruel) is not just for looks like it usually is for dogs. In large, free-range herds of sheep, shorter tails help to prevent skin infections, urine scald (ammonia burns), and fly strike (parasitic flesh-eating maggots) on their rears from long tails getting caked in urine and manure while out in the field for an extended time. I'm not defending the practice, it's just unfortunately the lesser evil. Docking could, of course, be eliminated by better husbandry, but that would cost time and money, so it won't-at least, not on commercial farms. Dogs, on the other hand, could mostly go undocked, with individual exceptions for the ones who need it for active work or due to injury. (PS-another fun fact for those who didn't know, "banding" isn't just for tails, it's also how many farmed ungulates are castrated while young: a tight rubber band cuts off circulation to the scrotum so it necrotizes and falls off) |
| /u/PotatoLove125 For sheep I've allways seen being done with rubber band but for dogs, when they are young, I've seen scizors being used. I don't know the implications on doing it with scizors but it seems to be faster and less painfull. Ps. I never did any of this, but I grew up on a rural area and I've seen a little bit of everything. |
| /u/PhantomAngel042 Right, I didn't make it clear, but I was mostly addressing the banding part of that other comment. Dog tails are usually docked via surgery or, like you said (horrifyingly), scissors on newborn pups. I can't even imagine. I always felt horrible when I merely clipped my dogs' nails too far back by accident... |
| /u/clduab11 When you say "by better husbandry", what do you mean? Genuinely curious; I was under the assumption that no matter how well kept and/or wilded the pasture was, this was always going to be an issue amongst a flock and docking was the only way to realistically manage it. |
| /u/TrickShape905 99.9999% of the time tail docking is done by the breeder within days of birth, the owner has no say. |
| /u/Ol_Pasta The owner does have a say in the form of not supporting breeders who mutilate animals. Tail docking is thankfully prohibited where I live. |
| /u/agnosiabeforecoffee My aunt tried for years to find a breeder in North America that would sell her a male with an intact tail. She finally gave up and imported one from the UK. |
| /u/Away-Living5278 I wish it was prohibited in the US |
| /u/junie94 I don't get how it still isn't. It's been illegal in my country for over 20 years. If there is no medical reason to remove the tail, why mutilate the dog... |
| /u/Key-Magician6489 I'm 💯% against docking when it's not necessary for the animals' welfare... ...but I know that some breeds have a strong genetic propensity for all the bones in the tail to get really thin and fragile after a certain point (like after the third bone, for example)... ...and if you don't dock it at the right place when they're newborns, you're guaranteeing the poor dogs will get horribly painful broken tails that needs to be amputated, anyway! |
| /u/NewTownTea This animal is more useful, more loved than me |
| /u/menzac Did the dog really smell the blood sugar through 2 rooms and 2 doors? Damn |
| /u/civilwar142pa Dogs have serious noses. They have between 125 and 300 million scent receptors. Humans have 5 or 6 million. |
| /u/lebrilla I feel sorry for them when I fart then |
| /u/DasMotorsheep It's... different. They process smells much more as a source of information than we do. To them, it'd be more like looking at an ugly painting (and knowing how the painter's digestive health was while they painted). |
| /u/Piccolo505 We should hold off on assumptions until we smell this persons fart. |
| /u/Hally_NL Now lets see Paul Allen's fart |
| /u/astralseat https://giphy.com/gifs/3YuR0bdGXlP6U |
| /u/Sir-Top-Cheetah the tasteful sickness of them farts |
| /u/Naked-Jedi My god. It even has a skid mark. |
| /u/SemiColonInfection That's bone. And the smattering is something called Silian Rail. |
| /u/eggyrulz The comment section was absolute gold today, yall are the best https://preview.redd.it/rrab3ep1yrnh1.jpeg?width=567&fo rmat=pjpg&auto=webp&s=139618fd5246e411577b3160f14a7d00a2 74ba80 |
| /u/CascadeJ1980 It was...phenomenal. 🤣 |
| /u/Syzygy_Stardust The original line also works, horrifically. |
| /u/IsThereARe-Do I snort-laughed at this comment. Thank you |
| /u/Cferretrun I also laughed.. stupidly.. outside of a bowling alley. |
| /u/digitag I did a fart in bed the other day that smelled so bad it woke my cat and she upped and left the room |
| /u/TaxSilver4323 Fantastic! Your story reminded me of the time my dog wouldn't get out from under our blanket and he was being obnoxious. So my husband farted under the blanket and we felt my dog move slowly to the foot of the bed and sick his snoot out for fresh air. Lolol. |
| /u/SidewaysTugboat Cats are so judgmental |
| /u/Trint_Eastwood it'd be more like looking at an ugly painting Considering how my dog loves to smell all the litteral shit we come across, I like to think my farts are like a visit to the Louvres for her. |
| /u/LogicNeedNotApply Happy little accidents |
| /u/vito1221 When we smell a pizza, we smell pizza. When a dog smells a pizza they smell the dough, the sauce, the oregano, the garlic, the basil, the pepper and anything else. |
| /u/LestWeForgive They'd be insufferable as coffee snobs. No no no it's not single origin enough, I only like the beans from the eastern rows in Maria's section, and they have to be washed and bagged by Enrique. |
| /u/Charming-Border7429 Then one day he lifts his head from his coffee bowl and says, "OH, hell no, Enrique changed laundry detergents, I'm not drinking this swill!" |
| /u/Individual-Towel753 Exactly! Thats why we shouldn't teach dogs how to use those talking buttons. Gonna have a bunch of fart snobs demanding fair trade organic farts. |
| /u/silentbuttmedley Farting textbooks at these hounds |
| /u/jarious So you're saying ops farts are abstract art? |
| /u/Apprehensive_Plum755 My chihuahua gets really pissed off if you fart when he's on your lap |
| /u/Pykret I dunno, man; mine looks at me and then gets up with dignity and promptly leaves the room. |
| /u/protestor They don't actually care.. they love sniffing butts |
| /u/auggs Lmao dogs are so weird. Imagine if humans did that. "What's up man how's your day going??" Then they just bend over and take a huge whiff of your butt crack 😂😂😭 |
| /u/xerocopi Glad to smell you've been eating well |
| /u/thesirblondie We would probably smell each other culturally if we could garner a lot of information about one another as a result. Although, dogs also do it because they can't distribute information the way we can (verbally). |
| /u/mercenaryarrogant When you're curious and that can tell a lot about a person because of how good your sense of smell is it probably wouldn't feel that weird to you. Where they might have been. What they might have eaten. These things were necessary for survival prior to their domestication. It's not like they can just turn it off. |
| /u/Sir_PressedMemories So, I am one of those "super smellers", I learned a long time ago to keep my observations to myself. Yes, I know when a woman is about to start her period a few days out; I actually give the folks in my home who have uteruses a heads-up so they are aware, but that's because we know each other and it is agreed upon to be OK. But I am not telling the the barrista to make sure she has supplies tomorrow when she comes in. I can smell when a person is healing from an injury; there is a certain smell that changes based on severity, and I am good at picking up on lies as folks tend to begin to have a sour sweat as they lie. I also go through hell with a teenage boy in my house, but I can diagnose car issues really fast if smell is any component. Also, I am known to sometimes say, "Listen, can you smell that?" There are some upsides to it. But yeah, if you can smell everything, keep that knowledge to yourself. |
| /u/JCvSS Mine eat other dogs poop |
| /u/klezart When I was a kid, I had a dog that would treat the cat's litterbox like a snackbar if I wasn't careful. |
| /u/lebrilla My dog loves a good kitty crispy if given the opportunity |
| /u/Valhalla5613 We had two that did that and would hide cat poop for snacking later |
| /u/Jumpy_Ad1631 As my spouse, who used to work with a rescue group, says "to dogs, there are no good or bad smells, just interesting ones" |
| /u/letigre87 Yeah and it's usually their own. They turn around like their asshole betrayed them and then leave you with the fallout. |
| /u/SidewaysTugboat We had a dog that would wake herself up with audible farts that scared her. She was quite a dog. She also loved rolling in dead stuff |
| /u/Rydme To them, your fart is probably like you describing in fascinating detail the delicious meals you have eaten over the past 48 hours. |
| /u/Helahalvan Idk. I farted once and my dog sounded like he sighed and jumped down from the bed right afterwards. Felt like I was the cause.. |
| /u/FSCK_Fascists might be more like he had been smelling something faint, and you overpowered it. Like screaming near someone trying to listen to a whisper. |
| /u/KuriboShoeMario Important not to anthropomorphize every action an animal does, they're sometimes not as easy to read as people and we're often pretty bad at reading the body language of our own species to begin with. |
| /u/FluteGunner My dog loves to sleep under my duvet against my leg. When he was a puppy he was doing exactly that, and I let a particularly nasty one go. I heard him sniff, then gag, then throw up. Hasn't seemed to put him off, 6 years later he's still sleeping against my leg, doesn't seem so bothered by the farts these days. |
| /u/purplehazzzzze to be honest, interpreting smells for dogs is closer to them reading an extremely descriptive story with copious amounts of information on the character (the source of the smell). They gain so much information from the scent and can also sort of file it away for future recognition. That being said, fart away! You're just giving your dog extra story time 😂 |
| /u/frozendancicle Imagine someone farts, when we smell it it's like a piece of paper with "POOP" written in huge letters. When they smell the fart, their piece of paper has 36 lines like, Nitrogen - 15%, Methane 32% etc etc., I think it's why dogs can eat poop, too. |
| /u/Loud-Concentrate3685 My border collie side eyes me and will often walk away if I let one loose 😂 |
| /u/Bringbackemo I don't feel bad for farting because when our dog farts my boyfriend and I have to clear the room and come back with febreeze. She's a 10lb chihuahua/jack russel mix and her farts are god awful sometimes |
| /u/Silly_Question_3733 Don't feel bad it's just revenge for when they fart 😂 |
| /u/bala-989 My dog literally eats cat poop that smells god-awful like it's the finest delicacy. They don't mind your fart. They experience it like a waft of someone opening an oven when something good is cooking in there. |
| /u/MrsCarmelaGiunta Dogs have serious noses. It's not like I was unaware they had a stronger sense of smell than us but learning just how strong and sensitive it is after getting my first dog after getting out the Army helped me mostly quit smoking cigarettes. We were at the vet for a checkup and some vaccinations and the vet mentioned he smelled like cigarettes and asked me if I smoked in the home or in the vehicle with him. I did smoke in my truck with him in there but not in the home and I told her. By the time she was done educating me it felt like I had just gotten told I was a massive piece of shit in the most elegantly and professionally worded scolding. She didn't say one single disrespectful or mean thing but I felt so damn guilty. https://preview.redd.it/j0x090ancrnh1.jpeg?width=4032&f ormat=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c0e57133832bb1b09b96aef656e4a500 665e126 |
| /u/Mandeville_MR Handsome dog, beautiful shot |
| /u/MrsCarmelaGiunta That's exactly how he got me to nibble at the shelter. He reeled in a sucker that day. Thank you, I appreciate it. https://preview.redd.it/4ikusycwirnh1.jpeg?width=576&fo rmat=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a17e22b2cf65ba798ca5f4501421d2ce2 6fe398 |
| /u/BorisBC Haha dogs can really work you at a shelter huh? My pup was looking like the most scared little thing while her litter mates were going nuts and it broke my heart. So we picked her. Little did I know she was the craziest one of all lol. |
| /u/Somanylyingliars Account nuked because reddit now forcing login. Fuck off Reddit! See you over at Lemy! |
| /u/jennnkins94 I was watching police bodycams last night on YouTube and this dog alerted and caught someone miles away because they left their car window open as they drove and skin cells were flying out the window (so the dog trainer said), their noses are incredible ETA: The trainer said that because the police were so amazed and they were wondering how the dog smelled the guy even though he was in a car, this was what the trainer had said when asked, that it was likely skin cells flying out the window due to the suspect having it open ETA 2 since people are saying this isn't a thing dogs can do, yes it is: "A human nose has about five million olfactory receptor cells in it. In a dog's nose, these cells are packed together with 10 times the density, and a large dog breed has a nasal cavity that is about four times the size of a human one, giving upwards of 200 million receptor cells. Tracking dogs follow the scent trail of a particular individual, which is mostly skin cells because they are heavy enough to fall to the ground and mark the route." Source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/what-do-mountain-res cue-search-dogs-actually-smell |
| /u/kikichanelconspiracy I always think of the 'Mythbusters' episode with scent dogs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67StXpZfII4. Basically, every misdirection myth was busted. In the original episode with Adam, the only time the dogs got confused was when they went to an urban environment. They were still found, but it took longer and that was only because the dogs hadn't been trained for urban search and rescue. My sister and I had a sniffer dog at Customs alert to a bag that had a pear in it the day before. Once she alerted her handler, the handler asked if we had anything our bag. I told her we had pears in our bag but we ate them before getting on the plane. She asked if we wanted to see her work and we both said 'absolutely.' She looked at her dog, an adorable little beagle, and asked her if she was sure. I'll never forget the way her ears flipped back as she decisively slapped her paw on the exact bag that had the pear in it. She asked if it was in fact the bag, we confirmed it was. She gave her best girl a piece of cheese before physically searching the bag to check that we were telling the truth about the pear before bidding us a good day. |
| /u/Interesting_Sign_373 I had that happen years ago, only the dog alerted to Starburst candy that we had eaten before the previous flilght! |
| /u/Mandeville_MR I watched a fun Mark Rober video where he tried to trick a search and rescue dog using various convoluted methods. It was really really impressive. |
| /u/wittynamehere44 Stupid human nose... |
| /u/lolzallday Pretty sure my sister has 20,000,000 scent receptors because she can smell my farts from outside my room. |
| /u/Starfire2313 Some of us are cursed with super noses. |
| /u/cassandrana I've seen a video of a dog alerting the parents while the child was across the street playing with a neighbor |
| /u/seasteed Same dog. I've seen a lot of this family's content. It's super wholesome. This dog is extremely good at his work, some of the last videos I watched a while back they sent him to a breeder that works with the org they got him from to hopefully have another generation of awesome dogs like him. They have another dog that failed as a dection dog and loves to just be included. |
| /u/AdDear528 I just posted the exact same thing. Amazing dog. |
| /u/johnnyhandbags My dog can be outside on the other side of my property and knows when I open a jar of peanut butter. |
| /u/earthlings_all Holy shit now that's funny! You need to post a video too. |
| /u/jld2k6 That checks out, I saw another video like this about a year ago where a boy's dog alerted the mom when the boy was at the neighbor's house across the street lol. It took a minute for her to realize what was happening with the dog because the kid wasn't even home |
| /u/diadmer Someone shared a story on here once that the service dog sat up and alerted the parent in their own living room, who then got up, went outside, crossed the street into the neighbor's yard several hundred meters away where his daughter was playing, and checked her to find out she needed treatment immediately. |
| /u/gingerbears11 Some dogs can smell cancer and Alzheimer's. They're amazing creatures. |
| /u/malfurionpre To be fair to us Human also can smell some things, there is a woman (Joy Milne) that can smell Parkinson's disease. |
| /u/SherbetMysterious118 us Human also can smell some things This is factually correct. Source: Am human and have smelled things. |
| /u/Helmett-13 When I worked on Capitol Hill in a CBRNE lab, one of the dogs kept indicating explosives around the front bumper of a Rep's car. None of the electronic sensors could determine a presence of anything so they called us and we took a swipe and make a solution and ran it through one of our Thermo-Finnegan machines and found a tiny trace amount, parts per 10 million. The pup was right. The Rep had visited an outdoor range the weekend before and some burnt powder residue had deposited itself on his car in the parking lot!! |
| /u/insomni666 I learned that the best cadaver dog can smell a body that was on a floor 24 years ago that's since been cleaned. Their noses are insane! |
| /u/Positive-Database754 They can do a lot better than that as well. There's an excellent video of a dog inside a home being able to tell a young boy had low blood sugar, while the young boy was outside playing in the backyard. Through a glass door and all the chaotic scents of the outdoors, the dog picked it up ~7 minutes before the sensor on the kids arm did. It's an incredible, proven, and well documented use case for service dogs. Lots of other diseases and illnesses that require invasive testing can also be picked up by dogs trained for it. The first ever case of dogs being trained to detect something in humans actually occurred after an elderly woman claimed she could smell people with Crohn's Parkinsons disease. They tested her using shirts of people who were confirmed diagnosed and those without a diagnosis, and she picked them all out correctly. That let them realize that if an old woman with a particularly sensitive nose to the hormone could do it, surely a dog could. And we have spent millions of dollars training dogs to smell things like this since. And, thankfully, they are a lot better and more reliable than an old lady with a genetic predisposition to smelling the hormonal changes in sweat caused by crohns parkinsons lol. |
| /u/BrucetheFerrisWheel That was Parkinsons disease. |
| /u/Flabby_Thor My dog can smell his favorite ball even when it's wrapped in a used towel and sealed up in a cooler bag. It's kinda nuts how good his nose is for his ball. |
| /u/ThrownAwayGuineaPig Was she really showering with her camera recording? |
| /u/Jazzlike_Climate4189 "Oh no, my child might have a critical medical event. Let me get my phone first and start recording!" |
| /u/Main_Hurry7912 Glad I wasn't the only one that thought of that 😄 Service dogs are amazing though |
| /u/kaijvera Yes they can. While this video could be faked, Service dogs can absolutely smell blood sugar that far away as long as the doors aren't sealed shut. Dogs are just amazing |
| /u/AdDear528 I saw a video like this a while ago, where the dog alerted about the kid who was playing in a neighbor's house across the street. It was crazy. |
| /u/lizlemonista I saw one dog that ran to get mom from the living room and the kid was outside across the street in the neighbors yard. pretty badass. |
| /u/Admiral_Ballsack I quote by memory but I remember reading that they'd be able to smell the presence of a cup of coffee poured into an Olympic swimming pool. Edit: we should use dogs to shame people who piss in swimming pools. |
| /u/Paddysdaisy My husband and our youngest are T1 diabetics, our cats regularly wake them up before their cgm's alert. They just started doing it one day. They are however not consistent, probably as they are cats and have better things to do. |
| /u/soofs Probably "forget" on the days they were fed late |
| /u/tryyeezus "no nip? Just die for all I care" |
| /u/eoghanmcneelyisfree "I had to wait 24.5 extra minutes for my food this morning, so tomorrow morning I'll just alert them 24.5 minutes late. |
| /u/u_r_succulent Or can't be bothered. |
| /u/SpamDirector I'm T1 and my cat sits up and sniffs the air in my direction perplexed whenever I'm low. She stares at me for a long while until she gets bored and starts bathing. |
| /u/FustianRiddle I have type 2 and sometimes go low. I swear my cats wake me up when my blood sugar is going low. They're start meowing at me and jumping up on the bed and pawing at me and I'll wake up and feel off and check my sugar and sure enough it's below 70. Hopefully now that I'm on a glp1 we can taper off the insulin so I don't have lows anymore. They're terrifying. I don't envy your husband and child. I'm glad your cats are looking out for them at least some of the time! |
| /u/Paddysdaisy Thank you, that's very kind. I'm so happy your glp1 is working, I wouldn't wish diabetes on my worst enemy. Sending you all the good vibes that you get to a point where it's no longer a worry for you. |
| /u/REpassword "That cup ain't gonna fall from the counter onto the floor by itself!" - Cats 🐈 |
| /u/INeedANappel My cat used to wake me up by smacking my face if I went low in my sleep. Onthe other hand, she also used to smack me awake if her breakfast was late. On the third hand, she knew I had an infection that was out of control long before I did. She kept leaning against me, which was unusual for her, so much so that I thought she was sick and dying. Then I took my temperature and it was over 104F/40C. |
| /u/dobsterfunk Probably safest that the diabetics feed the cats from now on. That will fix their priorities. |