Sniffing Out Seizures

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.