Sheepish!

Sheep 'saved owner's life'

A Wiltshire woman says her pet sheep saved her life - by spotting her breast cancer.

Emma Turner, 41, from Wroughton, had no idea she had a tumour when Cotswold sheep Alfie suddenly began butting her in the chest, reports the Daily Mail.

A deep bruise developed on the archaeologist's chest over the next few days and she then discovered a lump in the middle of it.

Ms Turner went to hospital to have the lump checked out and a biopsy revealed the early stages of breast cancer.

She has now undergone chemotherapy to treat the tumour, which doctors believe could have gone unnoticed for years if Alfie hadn't butted her.

Ms Turner said: "Alfie is normally really well behaved but that particular day he went nuts and it took three of us to hold him down.

"The doctors and nurses said that if Alfie hadn't done what he did, when he did it, I wouldn't have found the lump for a few years, by which time it would have spread.

"Everyone at the hospital is convinced that Alfie saved my life."

Ms Turner rescued five-year-old Alfie when his mother died during childbirth and nursed him through a number of illnesses during the first 18 months of his life.

She devoted months of love and attention to him and he became a firm favourite with visitors to Vowley Farm, in Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, where she keeps him.