It’s official. Angus has joined the VGH team, and he has his very own ID badge to prove it.

“Angus and I received our VCH ID badges on May 6,” says Teresa Zurberg, expert dog handler and trainer. “This enables us to take Angus’s training inside the hospital environment.”

Staff, patients and visitors to the VGH Centennial Pavilion will start to see a lot more of Angus and his superior sniffer. The Springer Spaniel, who celebrated his first birthday May 12, is already detecting C. diff from culture. Now, he and Teresa are taking their training to the next level and making history at VGH.

“Angus is the first dog in North America training to detect C. diff,” Teresa explains.

It’s a dog’s life

Over the coming weeks, Angus will be put to the test — actually, several tests — to see if he can sniff out C. diff in a hospital room under various conditions.

“C. Diff bacteria have a vegetative and a spore state, which is one of the reasons it’s hard to remove from the environment,” says Dr. Liz Bryce, regional medical director, infection control/medical microbiology.

Angus will be trained to detect the odour of C. diff from feces using scent pads. Then, if he passes all the required tests, he’ll move on to tougher territory — sniffing out spores.

“Once Teresa is confident he’s ready, we’ll conduct a series of double blind tests to validate Angus’s ability to detect odour,” says Liz. “This means that he and Teresa will be given a series of challenges using control and C. diff-positive samples and we’ll score for ability to correctly detect the positive samples and ignore the controls or blanks.”

While Teresa puts Angus through his paces, staff and patients will see a lot more of him in the hospital, where he’s always eager to greet new people and say hello. (Yes, his vaccinations are up-to-date!) If the last few months are any indication, the friendly pooch already knows how to win over people’s hearts.

Part of the team

Naturally, Angus isn’t alone. There’s R-D™ the robot and, of course, our housekeeping team. Together, they share a mission to protect patients from C. difficile and unnecessary pain and suffering.

“Our cleaners are a key partner in our fight against C. diff and other hospital-acquired infections,” says Jacqueline Per, director, clinical quality & patient safety. “It’s our hope that Angus can be trained to help us find reservoirs of the bacteria or spores to help guide us in our cleaning and prevention efforts.”

A triumvirate of disinfection power, housekeeping staff, Angus and R-D™ are part of a broader initiative — including decluttering, antimicrobial stewardship and improved isolation procedures — to reduce infection rates to zero. And our efforts are paying off.

So far this year, our rate of hospital-acquired C. diff is down to 3.58 per 10,000 patient days, says Jacqueline. “We’re tracking below the provincial rate of 4.5 per 10,000 patient days – but that’s not stopping us from striving for zero.”

Rotation in two months

The hope is to have Angus and his superior sniffer in official rotation in two months.

Meanwhile, there’s potential for Angus to support the cleaners in public areas of the hospital — such as waiting rooms, stairwells and other locations R-D™ can’t visit — says Jacqueline.

“If training is successful, Teresa and Angus have the potential to support many other facilities in the future, too.”

So should the public expect to see more dogs with hospital-sniffing jobs? 

“Wouldn’t that be great,” laughs Jacqueline. “We’ll see how Angus does, the lessons we learn and the viability of using canines in this new way in health care. Dogs can only train to one scent, I believe, so Angus and C. diff are partnered for life.”