Seizure-Detecting Dogs: Not Up to the Job?

A while back, I knew of a man who spent each day in the company of a "mental health" dog. It was supposed to alert him to an impending panic attack by dropping a ball into his lap.

There were a few problems with this. First, the man was very large. Would the dog be able to find his lap in time? Second, if the dog couldn't locate the aforementioned lap, would the pooch have its own panic attack?

The whole situation boggled the mind. (Who would warn the dog by putting a ball in its lap?)

But now there's evidence that dogs can indeed pick up on anxiety attacks --but perhaps not the epilepsy their owners think they're detecting:

Many dogs that are trained to detect epileptic seizures are actually predicting psychological seizures rather than "true" epileptic attacks, new research suggests...

"These papers by no means indicate that seizure dogs aren't doing something, but that many of the patients who request seizure dogs represent a small population of patients with seizures that are psychologically based," said Dr. Orrin Devinsky, director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at New York University.

This reminds me of a story I read about recently in which humans tried to indicate to dogs and monkeys where they could find food. As I recall, the dogs did a better job even though monkeys are smarter.

Why? Because dogs pay a lot more attention to what people do. (The Dog Whisperer guy is onto something.)

Trained Dogs Not Always Detecting Epileptic Seizures [HealthDay]