Teaching a dog to be a seizure alert dog

[SueM in MN]

Our cat has been trying to teach the dog for over 3 months, but he just is not catching on and I think the cat is getting frustrated.
Our players are:
youngest DD, who has between 2 and 5 seizures a month, mostly at night just after we all go to bed
our cat, Charlotte, who has been in our home for more than 10 years
our dog, Niles, DD’s Service Dog in training. Just over 26 months old and in our home for almost 24 months.

Charlotte has ‘alerted’ to DD’s seizures for as long as I remember. If I don’t wake up, she will wake up and then wake me by meowing. She goes into DD”s room and sleeps with her until DD has gone back soundly to sleep.

The SD trainer told us to start having Niles sleep in DD’s room about 4 months ago, so far, he has slept thru every seizure. The first one DD had when he was in the room, the cat came to the door as usual, but did not go into DD’s room (probably because of the dog). She did meow (a lot) and has gotten louder and has started coming back into the room.

Last night, DD had a seizure. Charlotte came into the room, walked right to the kennel and looked inside. I swear she looked disgusted that the dog was still snoring away. She walked right up to his ear on one side and meowed right in front of his ear.
No reaction from Mr. Niles.
Charlotte gave him another disgusted look and walked around to the other side of the cage, where she proceeded to meow in that ear.
Still no reaction.
She gave another disgusted look, came over and rubbed DD and me and gave a look, like “I’m really trying, but he is not cooperating.”
Charlotte spent the rest of the night in DD’s bed and Mr. Niles never did wake up.

If he doesn’t learn soon, I think the cat is going to give up.

 

[Piper]

Sue, I love this. I'm sorry that Niles is not catching on, but Yay!!! for the cat!

 

[dclfun]

From my understanding, not every dog can or will alert to seizures but most can be taught to respond. Does Niles alert if he's awake? Can he sense one coming on? Is there a way to keep him awake so that he can recognize when your daughter is having one and as such, be taught a response- coming to get you, nudging you, etc. For that he'll probably need another trainer besides the cat. ---Kathy

 

[jmartinez1895]

Our son uses a seizure alert dog who has recently begun to alert 15 minutes before one happens. Our trainer told us that if a dog is train able they may be able to be trained to alert during a seizure, but as far as alerting before hand is a gift that they either have or dont. Maybe with a little more time and work you can get the dog to alert, but it may also be worth looking into finding another dog if you are 100% on having one. I don't know if you have an account wiht yahoo, but I'm giving you the link to a group that has helped us alot. It is a group for people with seizure dogs. I hope this helps you some. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/seizurealertdogs/

 

[SueM in MN]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I mostly posted because I thought it was pretty funny that the cat sort of took it on herself to teach the dog.

We don’t need the dog to alert, but thought if he could learn, that would be a good ‘addition’ to what he can do. Since DD is always somewhere she can’t fall from if she does have a seizure, we don’t really need prediction.

 

[peemagg]

Well if you did need the predicition, put the service animal harnass on the cat and leave the dog home until he learns how too. LOL

I know that you have the dog for other issues, but I just thought it would be funny seeing a cat in the service animal harnass going around with your daughter. It would be quite a site.

 

[SueM in MN]

Well if you did need the predicition, put the service animal harnass on the cat and leave the dog home until he learns how too. LOL

I know that you have the dog for other issues, but I just thought it would be funny seeing a cat in the service animal harnass going around with your daughter. It would be quite a site.

LOL
it would be quite a trick even getting a harness on the cat. She may not be young anymore, but she's still fast.