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I now have the pleasure to speak with a dear friend, Amy Wyatt, who is an epilepsy advocate and recipient of a K-9 assistance seizure Response dog, named Lucia. Amy's son, Spencer, is now 11, and has been living with epilepsy since he was three years old. Welcome, Amy.
Thanks, Chris.
Amy, I understand that having a seizure response dog means a lot to you and to your family. How does Lucia help keep Spencer safe?
Well you're right, Chris. Having Lucia has meant a great deal to us. [UNINTELLIGIBLE] entire family, because she's actually become like a member of the family. She's given us an extra set of eyes and ears to watch out for Spencer. She has this special ability to be able to, most of the time, detect when Spencer is going to have a seizure before he actually has it. And the way she let's us know that is that her behavior changes. She's a very well behaved dog. She's very calm. She lays really still most of the time, but when she thinks that Spencer's going to seize, she becomes very agitated, she begins to pace around. And we know that when she starts to do that, something's probably up. Maybe we should keep a little bit of a closer eye on Spencer. And then if he actually does seize, and I'm not aware he's seizing-- maybe he's in another room, or it's in the middle of the night-- she's able to come and let me know that he's seizing. And the way she does that is by an alert signal that she was actually taught in canine assistance training. And that signal is to come and tap my hand with her nose.
So having her is really enabled Spencer to have a lot more independence and a greater sense of confidence knowing he's kind of got a best friend there looking out for him. And it really give me a great sense of reassurance to know that there's someone else watching over him too.
Amy, you mentioned about Lucia being a part of the family. And that's what epilepsy advocates is all about. It's helping so many people realize that we are in this together. We want to break down barriers, and really be a part of the family. And just talking to you, I understand that Lucia helps your family to break down barriers in understanding more about epilepsy. How does she help?
Well, it's been great. I think one of the things that Spencer loves about having Lucia is all the attention he gets with her. It's kind of like being the center of attention. We have Lucia with us almost everywhere we go, and places that you wouldn't normally be used to seeing dogs, like restaurants, and movies, and at the grocery store. So whenever we go places with her, she naturally draws attention. We'll walk by and people will say, hey, there's a dog.
And most people love dogs and they'll come to us and they'll ask questions about her. And so we love it when this happens because it gives us a chance to educate them, not only about service dogs and why we have a dog in this location, and let them know that service dogs are a valuable asset and support to so many people with all different kinds of conditions, but we get to educate them about our condition, which is epilepsy. And so we make sure that we always tell them lots of different information about epilepsy. We give them facts, and give them resources to go look at more information about canine assistance and service dogs. And we usually refer them to the epilepsy advocacy programs so that they can get more information about too, because that's what we want to do. We do want to break down the stigmas and the stereotypes that surround epilepsy and make sure that the education gets out there because the knowledge becomes power for people.
Yes. Lucia gets attention, but your son Spencer, he know hows to get some attention, too. With his attitude and that smile on his face, and I believe that your words, and your words of encouragement about, this can bring smiles to many people. So Amy, thank you, and Spencer and Lucia, for being a part of our epilepsy advocate family.
To hear more about Amy and other advocate stories, or for more information about epilepsy, UCB, epilepsy advocate or canine assistance, please go to epilepsyadvocate.com