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Meet Golden Lindsay
Sniffing
Out Seizures
CBS/The Early Show, New York, September 18, 2003
(CBS) A dog's sense of smell has a long history in helping humans — from
sniffing out escaped convicts to finding hidden explosives to rescuing people in
peril.
Now, what a dog's nose knows is more impressive than ever. Debbye Turner, The
Early Show correspondent and resident veterinarian, gave details of some dogs'
abilities to detect human illness.
Carol Folwell of Tarpon Springs, Fla., has suffered from epileptic seizures for
more than 35 years.
"I would fall a lot and hurt myself because I wouldn't know ahead of time when I
was going to have [a seizure]," Folwell said. "It was hard to go any place
because you were really afraid to go by yourself for fear you would have a
seizure."
But, thanks to the special talents of her service dog Lindsay, life has changed
for Folwell. Lindsay has the uncanny ability to detect her seizures before they
happen.
"[Lindsay] comes to me and tries to push at me or pull at me," Folwell described
as her dog's reaction before a seizure attack. "It's, like, she gets nervous,
and it's, like, she just knows something's going to happen."
And, Lindsay is trained to help Folwell prepare for her seizure and minimize her
discomfort.
"I get on the floor, and she can get the pillows off the couch for me and bring
them down on the floor to me," Folwell said. "Then there's time enough for her
to get my medicine and the water. And if I need her to get the phone, if I feel
I'm going need to call someone, she can get the receiver for me and bring it to
me."
Lindsay was trained at Canine Assistants in Alpharetta, Ga.
"What we do here is we teach the dogs to behave in a certain way when a
recipient has a seizure," Canine Assistant's Jennifer Arnold explained. "[We
teach] to go for help, to stay with that person."
Arnold said there isn't a way to train a dog to detect upcoming seizures.
"We don't know to what stimuli the dogs are responding. But most of our dogs do
develop the ability to anticipate [an attack] within the first year of service,"
she said.
Graduates of Canine Assistants are able to help people with a variety of
disabilities. How they do it is being investigated.
Jim and Dianne Walker of Florida State University are researching a dog's
ability to sniff out diseases like cancer. One theory is that dogs can smell
chemical changes in a sick person.
"Dogs are 10 to 100,000 times more sensitive than people to this particular
chemical," Jim Walker explained. "There is some evidence that a dog can pick up,
by smell, on melanoma. We're particularly excited about the possibly of having
the dogs aid — not replace, but aid — in diagnosing disease."
The hope is that there will be many more success stories like Folwell and
Lindsay.
"I mean, I don't even know how I lived the life that I lived before I had her,"
said Folwell. "I don't know how I got along. I have the independence that I
never had before I had her. It's just a new way of life for me totally."
Dogs are so good at sniffing out their owner's disease because they are
receptive to being trained. The trick, say experts, is to find out what they're
sensing in epilepsy or cancer, which is still unknown.
Some theorize that it's the dog's sense of smell. Others theorize that that dogs
could be responding to electrical impulses, or they just become so attuned to
body language that they can sense even the most minute changes in their owner's
demeanor.
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