A mum who thought her 'unusually affectionate' dog just wanted more cuddles has credited the pooch for saving her life - after discovering a lump in her breast that turned out to be cancer. Tanya Hibberd had been on a two-week holiday to Cyprus with husband Gary, and after returning home noticed that usually independent husky Sapphire was more affectionate than normal.
The persistent pooch, then aged three, staged a four-week cuddle campaign - cuddling up to Tanya and placing her head on and pawing at the exact same spot on her breast. Tanya, then 46, then decided to feel her breast as a precaution and discovered a 'massive gobstopper-sized' lump.
After visiting her GP, Tanya was stunned to be diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer and then underwent gruelling chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy. Although the customer service team leader regularly checked for lumps, she credits Sapphire, now six, for saving her life, believing it may have been too late to have treatment if it was spotted any later.
Remarkably, the 50-year-old says that Sapphire was born on the day that her father passed away from non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that she was told by a medium that she had come into her life 'for a reason'. Now cancer-free, the mum-of-one is keen to highlight that if pets who usually 'only want cuddles on their terms' start to take an interest in you then they may be trying to alert you to something.
Tanya, from Southampton, Hampshire, said: "Sapphire saved my life. I'd been on holiday to Cyprus and had done the normal checks that I do every month and not noticed anything. When I came back I started feeling more tired than usual. Sapphire is quite a lonely dog, she likes her own company, but she kept sitting on me and putting her head on my right breast every night, which was really unusual.
"For four weeks she kept doing that, I just thought she was being cuddly. I initially thought it was because we had been away for a two-week holiday but then it became more frequent and she spent longer snuggling into me. I didn't think anything of it and then one day she kept nudging there so I touched myself and discovered a lump.
"It felt massive and a bit like a gobstopper. I actually thought it was a cyst at first. I got my husband to feel it and he said I needed to go to the doctor."
After her August 2018 holiday the mum-of-one spent four weeks being nuzzled by Sapphire and after discovering the lump visited her GP and was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2018. Tanya believes that her tumour was 3cm to begin but grew to 5cm before she started chemotherapy at Southampton General Hospital in November 2018.
She then had a lumpectomy in April 2019 and at this point was told she was cancer free. This was followed by a precautionary 20 sessions of radiotherapy to ensure any stray cells had been eliminated, which finished in July 2019.
Tanya said: "I had 12 rounds of aggressive chemo, after the fourth or fifth week it had shrunk quite considerably and at that point she stopped laying her head on me up there. She'd still lay with me and if I was really poorly during chemo she'd lay with me under the covers, which is unusual for a husky as they're quite warm animals. She's now very protective of me. If I take her out for a walk she growls at people if they get too close to me."
Tanya credits Sapphire with saving her life, believing the pooch sniffed it out long before she'd noticed the lump. Tanya said: "We tell everybody that she smelt my cancer. When I found the lump I just thought 'what a clever little dog she is' and they say that they can smell things. I may have found it but I don't know. I checked myself three or four weeks before that and probably would have again in another couple of weeks. But by then because of the type of cancer I had, it may have been too late to have the treatment or might not have been cured."
Tanya says that Sapphire is a 'very special' dog and that she 'chose her' when the family went looking at puppies. Sapphire's birthday is also on December 13 - the date Tanya's dad Norman (Nobby) King passed away aged 67 from non-Hodgkin lymphoma - a type of cancer that develops in the lymphatic system.
Tanya said: "She's a very special dog. It's really strange because I woke up one Saturday morning and decided I wanted a dog - I'd never had a dog before in my life. We found Sapphire on a pet site, drove to Wolverhampton and she chose me - out of the three dogs that were available she wouldn't leave me alone. A medium [who visited her house] told me that she was sent there for a reason when she was a puppy.
"Her birthday, the 13th December, is the date [not year] that my dad died so I think she was sent for a reason. She's very special and will always be very special in my heart. I think she saved my life. I would just say that if you have a dog or pet that generally only wants cuddles on their terms and then they start taking an actual interest in you then maybe they are trying to tell you something."
