Seizure response dog

Epilepsy dogs, signal dogs also for epilepsy, are assistance dogs for epileptics. You can warn patients or their environment that will soon have a seizure begin ( attack warning dog, Eng. Seizure alert dog ), or are specially trained to help an epileptic during a seizure ( seizure service dog, Eng. Seizure response dog ).

Prediction of seizures

In a study of Canadian neurologists were 15 % of the dogs who live with an epileptic whose seizures ' predict ', without ever being aware of it trained. 80 % of dogs with this ability were female. Also 80 % of these dogs belonged to the large breeds (German Shepherd, Rottweiler, and others).

The dogs in the study said an attack requires an average of 2.5 minutes earlier, some dogs did that but also several hours earlier. The dogs often showed the impending attack on by frequent licking of the face of the epileptic or whining. Often the dogs kept the epileptics also from injury by, for example, before a seizure it prevented him from a flight of stairs to descend.

It is not yet clear what the dog recognizes the impending attack.

Behavior during a seizure

Epilepsy dogs are often trained to help the owner during an attack, such as the withdrawal of dangerous objects from the immediate vicinity of the victim, activate an alarm bell or draw attention to the epileptic.

Training

The training of epilepsy dogs is a relatively young discipline. In contrast to guide dogs or hearing dogs that live first with a trainer, epilepsy dogs come already partly as a puppy to their epileptics, if they are to predict seizures. Thus it can be determined relatively quickly if the dog has predictive capabilities, and then continue to train them and additionally teach the dog auxiliary behavior. In other types of training (as in dogs Assistance usual) initially trained auxiliary skills before the dogs come to their owners.

Criticism

In a work published in 2013, several studies were analyzed to epilepsy dogs. The authors come to the conclusion that mainly specially trained seizure alert dogs are able to predict seizures, but no valid data regarding the reliability and specificity of the warning behavior exist, since the experimental design used in each case having significant methodological flaws in all the studies. Against this background, they consider it questionable whether it is justified to suspend dogs such stressful situations.