[CarolineC]

We can't have any pets because I started having allergies after my mother passed away 7 years ago. Our family got a golden retriever three weeks after she passed and over the next 1 1/2 years I had four sinus infections and we had to give her away. Last summer three dogs on three separate occasions jumped on me. Two of them were little dogs and continuously scratched at my legs so much that their owners had to pull them off me. The third was our former pet who I had a chance meeting with when I was out for a walk on one of our local trails. I was rediagnosed a few months later.

Now when I'm out for my walks and I see any dogs I think "please don't look at me, please look the other way". I really believe that they all sensed my illness. When I was having chemo I had a heightened sense of smell; sometimes when out for a walk I would catch a whiff of something and think some people were cooking dirty socks, a car would drive by and I could really smell the exhaust, and I could always detect things that other people could not. Now my sense is back to normal but I always thought "this must be what it's like for animals".