PrefaceThis method was originally shared to me by my mentor, the Late Great Susan Grill of Trained and Maintained Service Dogs, who had a 90%+ success rate in training medical alerts in her dogs that she provided to people. I have her original document saved in my Google Drive, and have for years now, and I've decided to share these methods of training medical alerts to the public. Why post this?Well, for one, because I can. I felt like in order to help a wider range of people, this information shouldn't just be limited to myself and the few who also have this information, so this blog post was born. Did you get permission to share this information?Kinda hard to get permission from someone who's dead, just saying. So no, I don't have permission. However, Susan entrusted me with the information, and I feel like at this point, it's best to have it out in the open. More people can benefit from the information with it shared, and I've always believed in having access to information without a paywall. So, Susan, if you're reading this from beyond the grave, know I'm trying to follow your mantra of helping as many people as I can. I miss you. IntroductionI've researched various sources that dogs either alert to medical episodes (especially migraines and seizures) or they don’t. That you can’t train them to alert. I’ve even seen this opinion in a science journal. That article was not written by a service dog trainer or any kind of dog trainer or behaviorist, simply someone crunching numbers. Sure, approximately one in ten dogs will alert to a medical episode on its own (according to that article). But the rest… you can train. Not all dogs will catch on right away and not all dogs are suitable for service work, but you can absolutely train the skill of alerting to a migraine or a seizure. All dogs are aware of illness. Dogs use the Jacobson’s organ to process scent, an organ humans don’t possess, and are acutely aware of changing body chemistry. They can find a gram of cocaine in an airport — they know when you are going to have a medical episode. There is evidence that this is how wolves and other wild animals select prey. It simply doesn’t occur to them that YOU can’t smell illness. Why bother to warn you of something you must already be aware of? However, many dogs in fact are intelligent enough to figure out that we need help and will warn us, or will worry to such an extent that we become aware there is an impending problem. We call these dogs "natural alerters" since they perform this behavior without training. It is important to be aware of your dog’s body language and be able to “read” your dog. Most people are not dog behaviorists or trainers, which makes training your dog to alert difficult. And of course many people inadvertently train their dogs not to alert: Your dog gets in your face just as you start to feel awful, so you shove them away and scold them for bothering you at the worst possible moment. Your dog learns that just before their owner is going to have a medical episode, they should just go away and stay out of the way. Later I get told that your dog just doesn’t alert at all. The most important part is being sensitive to your dog’s behavior and being careful to watch when he gets worried about you, and then reacting appropriately. This is a story from Susan herself:
I myself have had moments where an alert came at a very annoying time, but our disabilities do not give a ripe shite about timing. They're always there, and those medical episodes are going to suck, so better to have crappy timed alerts than even crappier timed episodes. Training the AlertLet’s walk through training a migraine alert. You can use the same method to train for any medical episode, but migraines are some of the most common, so that's what we're going to focus on in this post. It helps to have someone on standby to train your dog. Use your worst trigger if you have one. Peanut butter? Interrupted sleep? Talking with your mother on the phone? Hot dogs? Whatever will trigger the migraine, go ahead and lay out your medication and some comfortable clothes, have your human assistant on hand, and get your dog exercised and happy. Keep an eye on your dog and see if they change their behavior toward you as the migraine approaches. If you get aura, cool. But eventually you’ll realize you’re getting the migraine. Did the dog start getting in your space, or begin whining, or start wanting to check your breath or lick your face? If so, you are going to teach an alert behavior. In this case, we're going to use Jumping Up as the trained behavior. The first place you excrete changing chemicals is in your breath. Dogs especially react to seizure and diabetic alerts by checking the breath, so don’t be surprised if your dog wants to get in your face. We call it the Tic Tac Test, as in, ‘Awww, dang it, do I need a breath mint?” But it’s not bad breath — the dog is checking for the change that says you are getting sick. No one really likes getting licked on the mouth. Just deal with it while you are training your dog. Natural Response: If the dog picks up on it on their ownIf the dog wants to lick your face without prompting, he is giving what we call a "natural alert" behavior. This is where we encourage the dog to start jumping up and putting their paws up on you, and mark "Yes!" and reward that (as described in my Marker Training blog post). Now you have a trained alert behavior (which is called a "Trained Task" legally), so when you're out in public, they don’t have to try to get in your face. They can just jump up at you and you know you need to take your meds and try to head off the migraine early. Many people with migraine alert dogs end up dispensing with the heavy duty meds entirely because they are catching their migraines so early. Trained Response: If the dog doesn't pick up on it on their ownIf your dog doesn’t alert, as you get the migraine, ask the dog to lick your face, and jump up on you. You can breathe gently in their face and get him to jump up. Don’t blow hard in their face. We all know that makes dogs crazy. You’ll only do this during the migraine, or as the migraine is coming on. The dog needs to associate jumping up at you with the chemical smell of this particular illness. The jumping will be the signal that you need to take meds. As anyone with migraines knows, the earlier you take your meds, the better they work. Dogs anticipate behaviors, so if you teach them to jump up during the worst of a migraine, eventually they’ll start alerting to you earlier and earlier. That’s pretty typical of a dog. Especially if you mark and reward the jumping, obviously. Dogs work by scent, and they’ll be able to tell when your body chemistry is only just starting to change long before you start to feel like crap. Why choose Jumping Up? Why not something more discreet or less obnoxious?Because you'll ignore it, or try to. You can't ignore a dog that's jumping up at you as easily as you can ignore a dog that's pawing at you, or booping its nose on your leg, or other subtle behaviors. We don't want to have the dog lose its training by way of you ignoring them; it defeats the entire purpose of having the dog alert if you just ignore the dog. Jumping up, Barking, Spinning in circles around you, etc. are behaviors that are obnoxious and really hard to ignore. We like these for alert behaviors because you can't easily ignore it, and you don't want to try. That's why we use them. What about for seizures? You don't always know when they're going to happen and you definitely aren't aware during them to train.If you are training for seizure alert, the same basic principal applies, but seizures tend to be easier to train for. The dog has a more finite incident to focus on. A migraine can last for hours or even days. A seizure can last for seconds, maybe minutes. Obviously you need a friend to help with the training for seizures, or a dog trainer. While the person is post-ictal, get the dog to perform whatever skill you chose, such as pawing, spinning, or barking. Actually, barking is a great seizure alert, because it alerts others around you. Eventually, with other seizures, the dog will put it together and understand that you want them to perform the skill beforehand. It’s a process. How to train a dog using a "veteran" dog?Once you have a trained dog, you’ll use it to keep yourself safe with an unbroken line of service dogs. This is the easiest way to train an alert dog. Once an experienced dog alerts, you have your human assistant grab the young dog and teach it the alert behavior you want, while you let it lick you and check out your scent during the medical episode. To ConcludeFeel free to share this. We believe in sharing information to help as many people as possible. Susan was frequently accused of fraudulence online because some folks think it is not possible to train dogs to alert to some medical episodes, especially migraines and seizures. Anyone who has seen dogs open cabinets and even refrigerators to steal food knows you can get a dog to do anything with the right motivation. Again, any questions, get in touch through our contact form. Stay safe, trust your dog!
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November 2023
CategoriesAuthorMyranda Miller |