Another wonderful day....
Day 3 was long, but extremely productive. We started out class by again, asking questions to Jeremy. We then continued with obedience as we are striving for total respect from the dogs. Blitzen is getting there. He is very sensitive and really wants to please; so therefore, he tends to be submissive most of the time. This makes him a very good alert dog. He doesn't miss a beat!!!
We practiced "heel" while walking with a shopping cart. This is gearing us for our first outing....we hit the mall tomorrow afternoon!!! I am fairly nervous, as he has to notice everything!!! (again, a good thing for detecting her seizures)
The afternoon was mostly dedicated to seizure work. One word....AMAZING!!!!! The trainers demonstrated how they train to alert to seizures. Several boxes (all identical) are put in a big circle. They all have holes cut out in the middle with something inside. One box contained the child's seizure shirt, still in the plastic baggies (these are the shirts she has been wearing for the last 6 months) and the others contained other white shirts in bags. The trainer would lead the dogs around the boxes and command "check." The dog would sniff around the box and when he got to the seizure shirt, he would stop and "paw." Each dog did this wonderfully!!! It was a sight to behold. This is the ultimate game for the dogs and do they ever get excited!!! They sent seizure shirts home with us and we practiced "check" and Blitzen immediately "pawed" me. YAY!!!! They want me to get up in the middle of the night and open the bag to get the sent in the room. He is not used to waking up in the night to alert. We will have to continue to practice with the seizure shirts until we are sure he alerts to Hannah. We are off to an encouraging start!!! Jeremy said today that they have an 85-90% success rate for seizure alerting (before the seizure occurs). He said this is because the kids begin to give off a scent before the seizure is recognizable to us. Therefore, they can tell us it is about to occur!!! How cool is that??? I have included a couple pictures of seizure alert practice.
How this journey started....
Hannah was born prematurely at 34 weeks gestation. She was a relatively healthy preemie; initially having difficulty maintaining body temperature and needing to grow. She weighed 4 pounds 9 ounces at birth. When she was four months old she began to drool, non stop. We were told the first year she was "teething." At 18 months old, we really started searching for reasons of why her shirt was always soaking wet. We saw various specialists who always sent us to another specialist, saying "everything looks okay." She spent years in oral motor/feeding therapy to help her not to drool. It wasn't until she was four years old and in preschool that we started to get some answers. Her preschool teacher commented one day that she wasn't reponding when her name was called. I took this information to her pediatrician who then orderd an EEG, "just to rule it out." Much to our shock and amazement, the results showed, she was having seizures. That is the day our journey REALLY began. Once she began taking seizure medication the drooling almost stopped completely. (She will still drool to this day when she is having seizure activity). Since then, it has been a roller coaster; countless medications and medication changes. She has never really reponded well to any medication.
About two years after she was diagnosed with epilepsy, the doctors noticed that her blood pressure was running high. After many tests, she was diagnosed with hypertension. We still are not sure why, but her cardiologist feels her blood vessels are thicker than normal.
About this same time, we also began looking into why Hannah was such a horrible sleeper. She would thrash, talk, move every which way, during her sleep. The sleep studies revealed that she has alveolar hypoventilation sydrome, which means she has too much carbon dioxide in her system when she sleeps. To help this, she wears a BI-PAP at night. This has been monumental in giving her more effective and quality of sleep.
Every day is a challenge for Hannah and our family as a whole. Blitzen has been an absolutely wonderful addition. She calms herself sometimes just by petting and loving on him. He has been trained in behavior disruptions and will sometimes be able to stop a meltdown from getting out of control.
It has been extra hard on the whole family since daddy is deployed to Iraq. He has been gone since January 09 and will gone until Jan 2010. We get to talk with him by phone and on the web cam; which is nice, but not the same!! Blitzen has helped to make his absence go just a little smoother....
Day 3 was long, but extremely productive. We started out class by again, asking questions to Jeremy. We then continued with obedience as we are striving for total respect from the dogs. Blitzen is getting there. He is very sensitive and really wants to please; so therefore, he tends to be submissive most of the time. This makes him a very good alert dog. He doesn't miss a beat!!!
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