I haven't updated on Jack lately, mainly because I've been busy training. He is now one year old. This last year has been filled with lots of ups and downs for us, mostly ups.
I can't imagine not having Jack in my life. He is my constant shadow, my four legged protector, my extra set of eyes, and my friend. He started alerting to my seizures in September of 2011.
His first alert was 8 hours prior to the actual seizure. Fortunately he has fine tuned his alerting skill; with my last seizure he alerted 30 minutes prior. He becomes extra "clingy" and whines and licks me as an alert.
His training is going well. In addition to the "basics" he also has advanced obedience training. He will go "down" with me giving a hand signal from 30 feet away. He also does a pretty fierce "down" on "recall", meaning as I call him to me I tell him to go "down" and he immediately drops down into position.
I can put him in a "wait" as I unload the car and walk 30 feet away, and he maintains the position until I call him to me.
We've been working him hard and increasing our expectations of him. Even when we are out doing public access training, we add constant distractions to make sure he is on top of his game. These distractions can be anything from a ball bouncing directly in front of him to a plate of food set down beside him.
He's already trained to retrieve my emergency medicine, water, and a phone. In addition to those tasks he is getting pretty good at recognizing my complex partial seizures and responding without any verbal commands. He is proficient in recognizing a tonic clonic and responding on his own, without any commands given.
Jack will continue to be in training for at least another 3 months, maybe more. We want to make sure he is proficient 100% of the time, in all situations, before we test him out and graduate him.
It's been a lot of work training him, but it's been worth every second of it.
Kaitlin
