By Kendall Winship

Kendall Winship’s service dog, Rally, pictured above, alerts her when she is about to have a severe migraine so she has time to take her medication before the symptoms strike. Service dogs are used for an array of purposes such as mobility assistance, guiding the blind, medical alert, psychiatric help, recognizing food allergens and are even used for aiding soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder
Photo by Alex Knaak /Nevada Sagebrush

Curled up at my feet, Rally looks up straight into my gaze and whines low and persistently in his throat. My professor and classmates in my history class don’t even notice the disturbance, but I immediately reach for my medication and gulp down my two pills with a chug of water. Rally’s tiny stub of a tail wags furiously as he lays his head back down, content. The danger has passed.

As a sufferer of chronic hemiplegic migraines, I live my life acutely attuned to my dog’s every movement. Trained as a medical alert service dog, Rally’s job is to warn me whenever a migraine attack is impending, and he takes his work very seriously.

He is with me every moment of every day, in shopping malls, cafes and classrooms, and even in the most chaotic of settings, he remains focused on his work. Without his daily assistance, I would be unable to drive a car, eat at a restaurant or go to the movie theater without fearing an attack.

Rally is one of four migraine alert service dogs in the nation. These dogs are highly valued because the ability to tell when a migraine is approaching is an innate talent; it can’t be taught.

Similar to diabetic alert dogs that can smell when their handlers have low blood sugar, migraine alert dogs can hone in on the scent of serotonin, a chemical that skyrockets when the body is about to have a migraine. By alerting to the danger long before their handlers might feel any symptoms, these dogs can warn them to take preventative medication.

When Rally looks up at me and whines, I know I have about two hours before the migraine will strike, and if I can take my medication early enough, I might be able to avoid the stroke-like symptoms and incapacitating pain. For the last year I had dealt with my migraines through drugs and various forms of therapy, but when I heard about migraine alert service animals, I immediately began my research.

The American with Disabilities Act defines service animals as “dogs that are specifically trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities,” and reminds the reader that “the work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability.”

In the United States there are many different jobs that service dogs can perform, such as mobility assistance, medical alert, psychiatric help and guiding the blind. They work with soldiers stricken with post-traumatic stress disorder as well as autistic and mentally disabled individuals. They can alert someone with hearing loss that the doorbell is ringing, or warn that a food contains a certain ingredient that will cause an allergic reaction.

However, there is no single exam or certification for an animal to become a service dog. This is due, in part, to the huge cost that it would take to form a national standardized training and testing curriculum, and in part because disabilities vary in nature. Each service dog is unique—custom trained to fit his handler’s exact needs—so it is necessary that each dog be individually trained.

To qualify needing a service animal, you must have a disability that severely limits your daily activities. A broken leg or other temporary disability does not count.

Once one determines that the help of a service animal will significantly negate his or her disability, the person must choose how to go about getting one. There are two ways to receive a service dog; the first is via a non-profit organization such as 4 Paws for Ability or Custom Canines.

Because the cost of training a service dog is so high, most individuals apply to one of these charitable programs to receive a fully trained service dog. This can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $35,000, and depends on the amount of fundraising and financial support you can raise.

Another alternative to obtaining a dog from an organization is to train one yourself. This is the path that I chose because I couldn’t find a pre-established program to train migraine alert service dogs. I also wanted to be heavily involved in my dog’s training because animals that are more tightly bonded with their handlers have a better chance of alerting to their migraines.

Now that I had decided to train my own service dog, I needed a perfect candidate. In general, service dogs in training must be at least two years of age, be neutered or spayed, healthy and vaccinated and be completely non-aggressive towards humans and other animals. While this narrowed down my choices from every single dog in the country, I was even further restricted because I was searching for a dog that was born with the ability to sense migraines.

I tried not to be discouraged by the high likelihood that finding my perfect candidate would be akin to finding a needle in a nation-wide haystack, and began to call rescue and shelter organizations.

Many times I thought I found a potential dog, only to be deterred: too young, too large, aggressive towards children, too old, the list continued. Fortunately, my search became noticed, and a few weeks before Christmas, Northern California German Shorthaired Pointer Rescue contacted me. “I think we’ve found a dog that will fulfill your requirements,” the woman’s voice on the phone said, and my heart soared. Within a few months, after fostering and carefully considering my candidate, I adopted Rally.

I knew that training Rally to become a service dog would require a monumental amount of work, and I immediately enlisted the aid of two professional trainers. Together we worked extensively with Rally to teach him how to behave in public.

The average service animal is taught over fifty commands, most in an effort to render them inconspicuous to the public eye. They don’t bark at passing pets, chase cars or urinate on the carpet. They are attentive to their handlers and oblivious to food, other people or distractions. A service dog is taught to heel on and off-leash and to lie down beneath a restaurant table or a classroom desk for hours at a time. They can turn on and off lights, push doors open, pull wheelchairs and retrieve specific objects.

Cheryl, who requested her last name to be kept confidential, received her mobility-assist service dog, Bentley, in 2007 from 4 Paws for Ability. She has even taught her dog to pull the covers back over her bed in the morning.

“Due to my disability, I can’t bend over, and making the bed is always one of the hardest parts of my day.” Cheryl explained. “Of course, Bentley helps me in so many other ways. If there are stairs, he’ll let me lean against him for balance. If there’s a door that I can’t physically push open, he’ll press the handicap button for me. If I fall down, he lies down besides me for support and together we’ll stand back up. It’s a team effort. Without Bentley, I would be lost.”

The decision to get a service dog was very difficult, as it meant admitting to both the world and myself that I needed help with my disability, but it was the best choice I ever made. Thanks to Rally and the unwavering support of my family and friends, I am now able to navigate the world without fear of a migraine attack, and that peace of mind is invaluable.

Cheryl put it best when she said, “Bentley isn’t just a service dog—he’s my best friend. He works hard so that I can live my life to the fullest, and that is a gift that I’ll never be able to fully repay. We are a team.”