Dog Health Questions: Can we have a dog trained to alert, without going through assistance training?

My husband has seizures and sometimes seizes and falls when nobody's home, or when he's outside alone. We don't feel the need to take an assistance dog because they're so specially trained, somebody could use the training a lot more.
We're really just looking into a dog that will, of course, be obedience trained, but also be able to bark and alert when he falls.

How would we go about doing this?

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Dogs aren't trained to seizure alert. About 15% of dogs in the general population do this naturally. In order to train this behavior, we'd need to be able to control it in some way, either to cause it as needed for training, or accurately predict it. We can do neither, so it is hit or miss whether a dog figures it out on his own. Nearly all dogs are able to detect the signs, whatever they are, but only a few are able to make the connection between observing those signs and understanding what they foreshadow.

We aren't exactly sure what they are detecting. There are several theories. It might be scent based changes in blood chemistry. It might be fine motor changes or subtle changes in behavior. Dogs are much more sensitive to these things than humans are because very subtle changes in body language are how they communicate with one another.

What I suggest is that you contact a program that trains seizure response dogs and ask if they have any dogs from the program that aren't working out as public access dogs that they might be willing to place as home-only service dogs.

I suggest this because the dog will already have basic training, and the odds of finding an alerting dog in a seizure response program is nearer to 50% instead of 15%. We believe that the innate ability to figure out alerting can be screened for when candidates are selected for training. Some of us have gotten good results above 90% accuracy. Some of what we look for are also characteristics that would coincidentally make a dog a good service dog. Programs have been reporting that within six months of placement about half of their seizure response dogs begin alerting. This tends to support our position that selection criteria for service dogs in general also tend to select for dogs who are natural alerters.

That's alerters (dogs that predict seizures about 20 minutes prior to them occurring).

What you've described is actually responding (acting at the time of a seizure or immediately after). That actually can be trained fairly easily.

First, find a local trainer to work with. Ask them to select the candidate for you. You need a dog with a good work ethic, biddability, and a love of learning. He also needs to be open to bonding and have a stable personality.

Any decent trainer should easily be able to help you teach a dog to bark on cue. The rest is just a matter of transferring the behavior (the bark) onto a different cue (your husband falling to the ground).

Your husband "falls" on the floor, you cue the dog to bark, reinforce the dog for barking, and repeat. Do the exercise at random times and in random locations around the house. After about a dozen iterations, have your husband "fall" to the ground and you hesitate before giving the cue to bark. Does the dog anticipate that the next thing that will happen is you will cue him to bark? If he does bark without a cue, then it's time for a jackpot (big reward and making a huge fuss over him).

If he doesn't make the leap in logic, repeat another dozen or so times and try again. Different dogs learn at different rates.

You could take it a step further and get a k9 rescue phone ( http://www.iaadp.org/rescue-phone.html ) and teach him to bark and then push the button and continue barking. If you notify your EMS system that you have a k9 rescue phone and that if it is activated and they hear a dog barking it means your husband is having a seizure and requires emergency medical care.

edit:

The bulk of service dog training is proofing, generalization, and habituation. The task training is actually fairly quick and straight forward. If you only need the dog at home, then you don't need about a years worth of that specialized training intended to prepare the dog to work in the distracting environements of public access.

If a home-only service dog will suit your needs, then you should seek that kind of dog, rather than a full access dog which might be needed more by someone else. There are more public access dogs needed than there are to go around. Home-only dogs are much more easily available because they've washed out of the public access part of a program and the program would still like to be able to place them in service because that's what they were meant and trained to do (just not at WalMart with all the little kids trying to stick French fries up their noses).

Training a home-only service dog with the help of a professional trainer is completely do-able, and legal in the U.S.

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• alot of time a golden retrever or a german are good at alerting, some dont even need training, its a rare case but some times they know some one is in trouble and they go and find help by barking or something but as training goes im not sure


• If you're worried about your husband, you're worried enough to do things properly. Don't think your problem is too much and "somebody could use the training a lot more". If you're truly worried, at least look into a real disability dog.
  If he's outside and collapses yet no one is in, who is going to bothered by a dog barking? I'm sure real disability dogs are trained to do much more than bark.


• Find a local trainer that has experience in training service dogs.


• I think that you could probably get an assistance dog trained exactly for what your husband needs, without taking a dog from a more deserving person. I think your husband is definitely deserving. You need the dog with the mind to do that work and although some family pets would learn to warn, you could have others that would not.. The trained dogs are chosen for their ability to recognize and act when they are needed. So go with the pros and get an assistance dog to guarantee the dog would help your husband in a time of need.


• Look into getting a real, trained service dog. You could be saving your husband's life. Even if you feel that it isn't needed, the people that train these dogs can probably steer you in the right direction.


• Maybe there is a specific trainer for that exact reason that would be able to help you out. However, sometimes dogs have an instanct which would let you know something happened. Whenever my older brothers rough house with my youngest brother (15 year age difference) my GSD who is normally quiet and low key will bark and growl.