Seizure Alert… Maybe

As I’m sure many of you know, I am training Cor to be a seizure response dog. As I explained in My, What a Lot of Types [of Service Dogs] There Are! that’s different from a seizure alert dog (which, in the previous post, falls under the MAD category).

A seizure response dog responds to the seizure–protecting their person’s head, getting help, pulling them out of the seizure through other means.

A seizure alert dog, on the other hand, alerts to an oncoming seizure. How they alert varies from dog to dog. Some will sit on their person, others will bark or lay down.

Here’s the thing. Most people looking for a seizure alert dog will be told that kind of thing can’t be trained–it’s something the dog either picks up on, or they don’t. End of story. You get the dog, train for seizure response, and pray they put two and two together as to when a seizure is coming, and start working on response time. If you are dealing with grand mal seizures and your dog can’t tell when you’re about to have one, nor get to you before your head hits the floor… well, a concussion is a lower-end possibility. Thankfully, my sister who has those types of seizures has been able to largely avoid that kind of result. If you had a dog that knew when they were coming, and your new dog doesn’t pick up on it, tough luck.

There are some systems that train for it, largely depending on the dog’s sense of smell, but the results have still been largely hit-or-miss. Moreover, it was never guaranteed dogs could smell them coming–that’s just what most people assume due to their more acute olfactory talent. Because of this, some programs have more results than others, but it’s overall kind of a gray area. Like most things. 

One of the reasons we went with Figz is because they’ve had a history of success here and were able to start him off on the right paw in recognizing my scent.

However–stay with me–I have made friends in the training group–Scouts Legacy.

Several of these friends have the same situation I am dealing with (that’s no coincidence–more on that another time).

One of these friends works at University of Texas.

Her boss found a study in a world-renowned scientific journal about experiments being done to see if the skewed-hormone levels seizures cause/are caused by have a scent.

So, for those wondering… 

🎶 I heard it from a friend who… 

heard it from a boss who… 

heard it from a journal they’ve been training some dogs. 🎶

Anyway… why would it matter if those hormone levels did have a smell? Because, the way diabetes alert dogs and PTSD dogs warn of oncoming episodes is recognizing a smell and being trained to alert to that smell. And, as I said, most of the programs training for seizure alert have done so mainly in the realm of smell. Seems to work, but, again, the results are all over the place, and no one had irrefutable evidence this was the way it happened.

So. Where do we go with this? Well, that’s where Cor and I (and others) come in. As I stated in the post Resolution: Fully-Trained Service Dog, responsible breeders will do other things in the canine world than just breed. Those at Scout’s are big into shows and such.

They’ve long hoped to be able to find a way to train seizure alert dogs because, as stated above, a lot of people in their program have them.

Well, They’ve put together a group of beta testers to form a new curriculum to train said seizure alert dogs. And guess who gets to be a part of it? We do!

More good news? The method we’re using is a method sport dog trainers have been using for scent recognition for years now with great success! Not complicated, not experimental, and there’s even a sport arena for that task if that’s something the handlers are interested in.

What this means, is that it is extremely likely to train seizure alert dogs. Not the hit-or-miss, some-get-it-others-don’t systems where we’re, like, 98% sure we’re going about this right. But it’s set on a firm basis.

What this means, is that, for those with grand mal seizures, they can know to lay down with a pillow beneath their head or take medication before the seizure hits, reducing risk of injury or–maybe–the very seizure itself.

What this means is that for those with petite mal seizures, we can know to get to a place to have it where we’re not in danger. Or, if we’re talking, to say, ‘one moment–I’ll be right back’ before we have it, so we don’t miss the information like normal.

What this means, is one step closer to normalcy.

AND!

Of the 5 tested dogs, 3 had a 100% success rate with the others clocking in at 95% specificity (alerting to the right scent) and 67% sensitivity–better than most in-real-life diabetes and cancer dogs.

So, from the looks of it, the seizure scent is either strong, distinctive, or both.

*Happy dance*

God is so good! Reminds me of a verse, actually. Proverbs 25:2:

It is God’s privilege to conceal things and the king’s privilege to discover them.

Or, as another translation says:

God delights in concealing things; scientists delight in discovering things.

Kind of fun to think of things like this as a little scavenger hunt God sets up for His children–who doesn’t love finding a geocaching box, or plastic easter eggs, or even a forgotten $20 bill in the pocket of their jeans? Not me. (Meaning I do love that. 🙂 What can I say? There’s a kid in all of us, and I certainly “delight in discovering things”!)

Sooo… yea. YAY!

PUPPY PICTURES FROM THIS WEEK!

You were not born to fail!

Lauryn