Shelter dog gains fame for seizure detection

AT A recent adoption event, Sienna — a 3-year-old lab and pit bull mix — made a beeline for a man she’d never met and gently placed her paw on his leg.

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“She saw him, and she started pulling on the leash very hard, which is not normal for her,” said Jackie Poppe, a volunteer with Friends of Campbell County Animal Control in Rustburg, Virginia.

The adoption event was held at a church yard sale, and there were several booths with different vendors. Sienna, who needed a permanent home, was going from booth to booth greeting attendees — until she locked eyes with one man and headed directly for him.

Poppe tried to pull Sienna away, but she would not leave the man’s side. That is when the man’s wife - who had been shopping nearby turned around and noticed something was wrong.

“He looked like he was definitely going to have a seizure,” Kristen Davis said about her husband, Josh Davis, who has epilepsy.

She said he appeared unwell and looked off-balance, the telltale signs a seizure could be imminent.

That day, June 7, Josh was also showing signs of a myoclonic seizure - his eyes were fluttering and jerking, his wife said. He had forgotten to take his morning meds.