You’ve heard about therapy dogs who have trained specifically for certain tasks like guiding the blind, sniffing for drugs and those who help veterans with PTSD.
We’ve recently heard about dogs being treated to sniff out human disease and help us when we are in trouble. These dogs are trained to alert for things like when an epileptic is about to have a seizure, if someone with diabetes has their sugar dropping into the dangerous range or even someone who doesn’t know they have cancer. Here’s some information on specialty training for alert and protection dogs.
Epilepsy
Also known as “seizure dogs,” these animals are trained to respond to someone who’s about to have as an epileptic seizure.
Some dogs are trained to bark as an alert for when someone has had a seizure. Others are trained to lie down to prevent injury to someone afflicted with a seizure. And still others can be trained to activate an alarm system.
The dogs who alert after a seizure has occurred are called a seizure response dog. But there are also dogs who are trained to alert prior to a seizure occurring and they’re called a seizure predicting dog.
Diabetes
The danger with diabetes is that someone’s blood sugar could crash and send them into a diabetic coma without having enough time to get an insulin injection.
A diabetic alert dog is especially valuable if a diabetic does not feel the symptoms of low blood sugar coming on like sweating, shaking or confusion. This can happen at night when they’re sleeping and it’s important to get insulin into them right away.
A diabetic alert dog is trained to give an alert when a diabetic’s blood sugar is either too low or too high.
Cancer
Early detection of cancer is the best way to beat it. What does this mean for you? A cancer detecting dog could save your life.
At InSitu Foundation, researchers are learning to train dogs to tell the difference between cancerous and benign tumors in a breast cancer study with Duke University. The goal for this Foundation is to use a dog’s sensitive nose to provide a diagnostic screening option for early cancer detection in people. The dog’s nose is so sensitive, it’s no wonder we can teach them to help spot disease and alert us to seizures or low blood sugar before a crisis occurs.
Photo Credit: istockphoto.com
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