The article I am writing about today is titled “Seizure alert/response dogs” and was written and published by the website servicedogcentral.org. In my earlier blog post titled “Service Dog in the Yearbook” I learned that some service dogs are trained to predict epileptic seizures. I found this very interesting and thought I’d look further into it.
The article starts off by talking about how many dogs are actually able to predict seizures. Only fifteen percent of dogs are able to predict seizures before they occur. Usually these predictions can be made around 10-20 minutes before the seizure happens, giving the dog an opportunity to notify friends or family. This is the seizure alert dog. The seizure response dog helps the individual when a seizure occurs. Some of the tasks these dogs help with are clearing vomit from the individual’s airway (gross I know, but very crucial), operating a K-9 phone, helping the individual balance if needed, and other activities that help the individual survive for some time before help arrives. These two dogs combined are simply called “Seizure Dogs”. Nobody knows how the dogs know when a seizure will occur. There are two theories: “(1) that the dog is able to smell minute changes in the person's biochemistry, possibly in their blood chemistry or (2) that they are able to detect fine motor changes imperceptible to human eyes”. This ability to detect seizures is natural and only occurs in some dogs, but not others. Dogs can be trained to detect seizures, but without knowing when a seizure will happen, there is no way of training. For most seizure alert dogs it takes them close to six months before they can accurately start predicting when their owner will have a seizure.
This to me is beyond amazing. It is unbelievable to think that dogs can predict when an individual will have a seizure of some sort. It’s also crazy to think about how these dogs are trained to respond to an individual having a seizure. How are these dogs taught to help individuals experiencing a seizure? How do you train them to turn the body over so airways aren’t blocked, or to call on the K-9 phone? I could research this using the internet, but talking to a trainer that trains these types of dogs would be much more satisfying.
Link to Article
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