Rescue dog detects 6-year-old boy’s seizures

Six-year-old Leo suffers from multiple brain aneurysms that cause seizures. By his fifth birthday, he'd undergone three brain surgeries.

During Leo's long stays at the hospital, the young boy fell in love with the therapy dogs brought in by Love on 4 Paws to comfort the sick children.

"As soon as the dogs came, he lit up," Yasmine, Leo's mom, said. "He started walking, he started having them do tricks...he was laughing, he was smiling, and within three days he was out of the hospital."

Yasmine decided to get Leo his own dog.

A dog named Henry, saved from a shelter's "kill list," quickly became both Leo's new best friend and therapy dog. With some training, Henry became Leo's seizure-detector: he can identify the chemical scent of Leo's body right before a seizure and will alert Yasmine when one is about to happen.

"Dogs can smell the smells that the body is going to let off before the seizure and they learn that this is not normal and will raise the alarm," said Bob Taylor, who trains dogs to detect seizures.

"Henry's ability to detect seizures is a natural talent. It happened by accident, and it consistently keeps happening," Yasmine told The Pet Collective. "The fact that he is by Leo's side is so valuable to me. I know that he is there for Leo."

Henry stays by Leo's side during each episode.

"It has helped Leo so much to just recover from all of these hospital visits and these pokings and proddings, and concentrate more on being a little boy, and being a little boy with his dog," Yasmine said. "They have a connection deeper than I could have ever imagined."

Watch their story in a video from The Pet Collective below.