The girl with the Great Dane

By Aspasea McKenna
Staff Writer

She’s the girl with the Great Dane.

Tabbitha Schliesman is a 19-year old junior majoring in Community Psychology and minoring in Education. Duke is a 6-foot-2 Great Dane who is a licensed seizure-alert dog.

Here’s how the unusual duo formed.

Tabbitha has a rare form of vasovagal syncope, a nervous system disorder that induces fainting at the sight of needles or blood and the sensation of pain. The condition, which has been likened to “fainting goat disease,” is marked by a temporary drop in blood pressure. But where goats faint, Tabbitha has seizures.

Her symptoms begin with a 10 to 20 second hot flash accompanied by nausea and stomach pain. She then faints and has convulsions.

“The doctors couldn’t figure out what it was,” she said. “They knew it wasn’t epilepsy.”

The seizures began when Tabbitha was 18 months old. Something as simple as learning to walk caused her to have up to seven seizures a day.

Her condition has improved as she’s gotten older, and she now has approximately two to four seizures a year. She never planned to get a service dog.

But in February of 2012, after 18 years of living with her condition, she met Duke. Unlike the traditional method of an individual picking out an animal pre-trained for their condition, Duke picked Tabbitha.

While she was driving one day, Tabbitha swerved to avoid what she thought was a deer in the road. Instead, what she found was a deer-sized dog. She opened her car door to check on the animal, and in jumped Duke.

“It sounds really corny, but it was love at first sight,” Tabbitha said.

After unsuccessfully searching for Duke’s owners, Tabbitha and her family were ready to give him up to the Dane Outreach, a local rescue organization. One day, however, Duke predicted an oncoming seizure by smelling a change in Tabbitha’s blood sugar.

“He came over to me before it happened and pushed me into a chair. And then tried to lay on top of me.”

Tabbitha and Duke then began the rigorous process of seizure alert/response training. In March of last year, he was officially licensed.

“We did a lot of seizure provoking,” Tabbitha said. “You have to cause a lot of seizures and pretend there’s a lot of seizures.”

This included exercises like stubbing her toe to trigger small episodes, or imitating symptoms by lying down in public places such as grocery stores. In response, Duke prompts her to lie down and hovers over her body to keep people from coming near.

Unlike epilepsy, people with vasovagal syncope should not be touched while seizing, as it can cause further injury.

While Duke’s presence might define Tabbitha on campus, she doesn’t let her condition control her life the way many might expect.

“It would be like someone with Type I diabetes not eating anything because they have diabetes,” she joked. “Just because I might get hurt doesn’t mean that I’m going to stay safe.”

She has been riding horses since she was six years old, rides motocross with her boyfriend, bungee jumps and cliff jumps. She even has a tattoo, well-aware that getting one would elicit a seizure. It did.

“I just don’t care,” she said. “If I get hurt, I get hurt. If I have a seizure, that’s what I have Duke for.”

Being accompanied by a dog that stands 6-foot-2 on two legs gets you a lot of confused stares.

“It’s a natural thing. A lot of people have never seen a dog this big, let alone in public,” she said.

It can be frustrating at times, especially when people pet Duke without permission.

“People have to ask to touch a service animal,” she stressed. “And guide animals for the deaf and blind are not allowed to be touched at all.”

Through her own experiences and bond with Duke, Tabbitha has decided to pursue a career in animal assisted therapy and counseling. Using therapy dogs to council children, she hopes to help them cope with mental health issues.

“Even just having an animal to take care of can get people with clinical depression out of bed,” Tabbitha said.