Nitya #1: Weeks 1-4, Getting Lost, and Lots of Puppies

Out of all the struggles I expected to encounter this summer, little did I know lunches would be at the top of that list. After not having to make my lunch for the last 5 years of my life, I found it to be a great struggle to start making my own lunch again. First week in, coming into my lab, I was at first intimidated by the location of the lab (35th and Gray's Ferry Avenue--not the safest of places), but it does make sense to not be in a very public place and surrounded by abandoned buildings to successfully train working dogs for a wide array of purposes. Thankfully, since I was commuting to my lab everyday, my PI was very flexible with my hours (usually from 9am-3pm everyday). I usually began my day with shadowing a trainer on a walk by video recording or collecting data on fitness and husbandry related tasks, then I would assist in the cancer trials by either helping clean the materials between every session, collecting data, randomizing the order of the samples, or by clicking when the dog alerts on the correct sample port on the wheel. I would assist in the breakdown of the study as well.

 

 

There were three dogs that were classified as "cancer detection dogs" which belonged to the facility for research purposes and would not be sold. There was one German Shepard (Tsunami), a spaniel mix (McBaine), and a yellow labrador (Ffoster). Collectively, all the dogs had a 98% success rate on which they alerted at the malignant cancer sample. The dogs were tested on a wheel on which there were 12 ports. The ports consisted of plasma samples from three different people. One person had normal blood plasma, another had benign plasma for ovarian cancer, and the third had malignant ovarian cancer. All the samples were donated to Penn for research purposes and provided to the PWDC. The 9 other ports on the wheel consisted of blanks or controls. 

The people at my lab were mostly Drexel co-op interns and Penn Vet students. My PI  (Dr. Lorenzo Ramirez) was a post-doc employed by the Penn Working Dog Center. 

 

 

My first week commuting to Philly I made every mistake in the book. I somehow managed to be bitten by an adorable 8-week old lab with razor sharp teeth, I forgot my wallet at home (thank god for uber!), got on the wring train (and ended up in North Philly!), fell asleep on the train and missed my stop, and somehow managed to let my phone die on the way back home. But somehow, despite these occurrences, I survived.