Dog Days: Seizure Response Dogs Prevent Injuries, Save Lives

Originally Published in 2007

Things are going to the dogs for some people with epilepsy. And for those fortunate few, it's a godsend.

Seizure response dogs can and do save lives and avert injuries every day. The trained canines guard their masters during a seizure, activate medical alerts, or go and get help when necessary.

Trisha lives just outside of Austin, Texas, with her 5-year-old black Lab, who not only responds to her seizures, but predicts them.

Buttons has saved my life more times than I can even say. My life would never be the same without my dog. - Trisha

How One Trainer Got Started

Chief Operating Officer Mike Sapp founded Paws Paws With A Cause (Paws) in 1979.

"We got started basically to help a deaf couple that wanted their pet dog to alert them to sounds they couldn't hear. I trained dogs as a hobby and I delivered to a place where the deaf man worked."

Sapp said there was no blueprint for training service dogs at the time and he went "by guess and by golly." He said he was surprised himself that the process worked so well. "It was a lot of operant conditioning to find out if the dog would respond appropriately to the sound."

Paws remained an avocation for several more years. "It was 1987 before I quit my day job," Sapp said.

A year later, he trained his first seizure response dog. Matching dogs with people with epilepsy is still more art than science. "It depends on the person and the severity and what kind of seizures they have," Sapp said.

Matching Dog, Master

Sapp said he tries to match the dog to the personality of the person receiving it.

"If I've got a college student, I'm not going to give them a couch-potato type dog. If they're an active person, they need an active dog. In the case of a seizure response dog, we want what we call a very clingy dog, very in-tune to the owner."

He trains the dogs to lay across those having a seizure to keep them from hurting themselves. The dogs can push a life alert to call the neighbors or a hospital. But he does not train the dogs to aggressively protect the person having a seizure.

"If you train the dog to be protective, the dog could misread someone who is trying to help," he said. "If an emergency unit comes in, the first concern they have is the person on the floor, not trying to take care of a vicious dog or an aggressive dog that's going to slow them down. In most cases the dog is going to be enough of a deterrent to keep the person from being robbed."

Prediction

Sapp is quick to point out that Paws does not train dogs to anticipate seizures. "The hype for the media is that these dogs are trained to predict seizures ahead of time," said Sapp. "The reality is that we've trained 65 dogs in seizure response and only 12 of them have started doing this, usually after they've been with a person a while."

A Dog Named Buttons

One of those 12 is Buttons. Trisha, now 37, acquired her dog nearly four years ago when members of her community raised $7,000. There was no break-in period for Buttons. She went to work right away.

"I was up all night the night before I got her because I was so excited, said Trisha. She was told to keep buttons in her tote the first few nights until the dog got used to her.

In the middle of the first night, Buttons started causing a ruckus. So Trisha, thinking the dog might be homesick, removed her from her carrier to comfort her.

"She was clawing at the tote, so I let her out and started petting her," Trisha said. "And within 30 minutes, I had a grand mal (tonic-clonic) seizure. And then two days later I had another one and she predicted that one. She jumped on my lap and stared right into my face."

Intense eye contact is Buttons' modus operandi. "If I'm standing, she'll try to nudge me over and get me to sit down," said Trisha. "Then she'll stare right into my eyes. I know what she's up to." Trisha says Buttons has never been wrong, giving her up to an hour to prepare for a seizure.

On Being Turned Away

One thing that bothers Trisha is the bias she encounters when she is turned away at restaurants and stores. Some places don't accept Buttons as a service dog because Trisha as no visible disability.

"I've been thrown out of department stores. I talk to them. I show them my license. And it does no good," Trisha said. "The thing I hear most is, 'It's store policy.' I try to explain to them that people need dogs for more than seeing-eye or deafness problems. So I have to stand there and argue. Meanwhile everyone is staring. They make a big scene out of it. It got to the point where I just didn't want to go places."

Spokespeople for several large department stores said that they do not discriminate against any kind of service dog.

How does it work?

One thing all parties agree on is that no one is quite sure just how seizure alert works with dogs like Buttons.

"I think a lot of it is that people give off cues and dogs are more alert to read our body language," Sapp said. "But there haven't been enough scientific studies done. To tell you the truth, I don't know why."

Neither does Trisha. "They tell me it's like a sixth sense. I have no idea," she said.

Nor, to a degree, does she need to know.Trisha said if she appears somewhere without her dog, friends immediately where Buttons isl. Trisha said that Buttons is more than a life-saving service animal, more than a constant companion, and more than a best friend.

She's really a part of me. - Trisha

Reviewed by

Judy Gretsch

Reviewed Date

Sunday, April 07, 2019

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