We got Teddy Bear when he was about 12 weeks old. He wasn’t necessarily intended to be an assistance dog, but I have epilepsy, and when he was about 14 months, we realized he could sense an impending seizure before I realized one was on the way. I take medication, but sometimes it doesn’t work and I still have seizures, ranging from very mild, like “zoning out” or falling asleep for a few moments, to a full-on grand mal seizure.
I usually know about 20-25 minutes before a seizure, but Teddy knows about an hour before. If I am at my desk, now five-year old Teddy will come and sit on my feet. If I am resting he will get as close to me as possible. If it’s a mild episode, he just leans on me or if I’m already resting, he snuggles until I recover. For something more serious, he will alert my son. He has a range of “alerts,” but since age three his prevalent method has been to get very close to my son at his desk and breathe on him.
One night I had a really bad seizure. Because my son sleeps like the dead, Teddy got up on his bed and sat on him until he realized something was worse than usual and called an ambulance. Teddy was never taught to do this. He just did it!
More recently, I passed out on the concrete outside our house. When my son woke me, we decided I must have been unconscious about two hours. He asked why my t-shirt was wet. I had no idea, but there was a trail of water from Teddy’s bowl to where I had been lying. We realized Teddy had been going back and forth from the water bowl, dripping on me and licking my face and neck to keep me cool or trying to revive me.
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from Catherine in Australia