Sz alert dogs

[Moonwolf]

Don't know what its like anywhere else but in England there is a charity that trains dogs to let you know before hand that a seizure is coming. You can go anywhere and take them with you, just like guide dogs for the blind. They will also alert your family if they are somewhere else in the house. I am going to apply to them and see what happens. For this you have to have at least 10 seizure's a month, and seeing as I'm well over that it should be O.K..

The only thing that I hate about this is that you have to fill in a 6 month diary. I hate it because it is part of my life what happens, and once it's over I want to forget it and live life as normal as possible.

[Georgiagirl88]

Good luck getting your Dog. That sounds really helpful! Hope it works out..I know what you mean about wanting to just forget and live normally and leave it behind. I feel that way too. Sometimes it feels like it encompasses your whole life. I hate that. This week I am actually on a trip and relaxing nicely, forgetting about the seizures, trying too..but now my Mom is really sick. I am very worried about her. : (( Life sure has ups and downs, doesn't it? Hope you get your Dog. ANd that you are doing well.

Michelle

[RobinN]

To get a trusted friend sometimes it takes a bit of effort. A diary is worth it I would think.
We use to live near the training facility for the Guide Dogs for the Blind and I loved watching them work with the animals.
I can't wait to hear about it when you are paired up with one.

[alivenwell]

I own...no let me rephrase that....a border collie has taken total control of all people in my household. She has all of us trained for specific tasks at specific times. I get to feed her breakfast and give her fresh water before work. My son runs her around the back yard with all kinds of toys and shares food with her. My husband provides her with a secure lap and cookies. And, during the evening, I take her for at least a two mile walk (she's high energy and easily bored when kept in the house all day). The walk burns off her excess energy and give me a stress buster.

With her intelligence, I would presume she could sense if I was about to have a seizure. She is always by my side. I'm not exactly sure how seizure therapy dogs are trained, but I think a fairly smart mutt would do the trick. They get to know you really well.

My dog probably could not prevent me from falling hard on the floor, but I suspect she would be able to detect something was wrong.

[Moonwolf]

Thanks for the welcomes.

I used to have a Border collie, it's like they have a ball of energy round them thats 100 X bigger than the dog.

If you watch you will see certain actions happen just prior to you having a seizure. Zak used to sit about 4 foot away from me and cock his head to one side and look me straight in the eyes, but wouldn't come near. I lost that friend of mine a few years ago.

[Bernard]

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you will find links to several previous discussions of seizure response dogs.

[alivenwell]

I found the following link that verifies info on seizure response dogs:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...izuredogs.html

[wvueers]

I also have a border collie. He seems to know everything we are going to do or even talk about. When i was having grand mal's, he would let my wife know and than growl at my wife when she got close to me, like he was protecting me. Dog's are truely man's best friend. Rocky also knows when the pizza man delivers.

[CJR]

We own three Siberian Huskies, however, they are decidedly untrained. While highly intelligent they do as they please without much regard to the person on the other end of the leash. They are all extremely sweet and very well mannered around the children. At night they sleep outside in a kennel so they weren't inside when my daughter had her seizure. So I didn't think anything about it when they came inside later that day but my husband commented a couple days later that I had to do something about the dogs. I looked at him surprised and said, "Why? They're behaving." And he said because they've been laying on our daughter for two days! I looked at her with the dogs, one dog asleep on her feet, another with his head on her lap, and the last had wiggled all but one foot up into the recliner with her. It suddenly dawned on me that hubby was right. They had been all over her for days.

Since then I notice that all the dogs have been extremely whiny during her two other seizures. I don't know if they are seizure detecting dogs but they do seem to be very in tune with our girl.

CJ

[Moonwolf]

All dogs detect seizure's. They do not have to be seizure trained but will show it somehow. It would seem that your huskies are like the German shepherd that I had. He used to sit or lie on me as if he was trying to stop me moving during a seizure.

Don't all dogs know when the foods being delivered?, they don't let you off that lightly.

[Moonwolf]

My apologies, forgot to put link in. This charity train dogs for 2 specific areas, e and autism. you will find them at

http://www.support-dogs.org.uk/

Sorry, not allowed to put link on but if you type it in you will get there.

Dave

[skillefer]

In the US, it's a bit different. There are seizure alert dogs (which supposedly can sense when a seizure is going to happen and warn the owner) and seizure response dogs (they are trained to assist the person having the seizure either by getting help, staying near the person, etc.). Not all dogs can be seizure alert dogs. However, with the proper training and temperment, all dogs can become seizure response dogs.