Hi All:
I've not written in a while but had something happen yesterday that I wanted to bounch off of you. (To recap my situation: Have a 7 year old boy with SEVERE PA)....Had an incident happen at school yesterday which had me talking with a "dog lover"....she said if they have bomb and drug sniffing dogs, why can't we get dogs to aid our children in sniffing out peanuts and peanutbutter? To me, having a dog by my son's side would make him feel more confident and assist in a situation where a child has eaten peanutbutter and my child is approaching him. (FYI -- my son cannot even smell peanutbutter without getting itchy eyed and my leave the area immediately upon smelling or will have reaction.) Any ideas? What are your thoughts. To me this seems so simple. It shouldn't cost nearly what bomb dogs cost in that PB is such a definite smell and dogs love it. It should be easy to train a dog and probably a good obidience class trainer could do it.
Hey, that sounds like an interesting idea, to have a working dog! Dogs are trained to sniff out all kinds of different stuff. Unfortunately, our allergist said that dogs (and cats) are an allergy potential for my daughter, or more specifically, asthma potential. I think that might be the case for a lot of other people too, since pet dander is a major allergen.
But if it works for you, it would be great!
Amy
Great idea.
I wonder how one would go about getting that ball rolling?
If you search "sniffing dogs" in yahoo you will find over 1,000 sites, many of which, might help you. Andy
Woozermom, I brought this back to the top since you mentioned the same idea.
I talked to a man in Florida who trains dogs for the President (bomb dogs, etc.) He said that any good trainer could teach a dog to do this; however, the issue he saw was that the owner (child) would have to be responsible for the dog. My thought is that the school should take the responsibility for the dog and have it part of the "school staff" per se for those children who have PA.
I have nothing to add other than I have thought of the same thing too. Dogs can detect seizures & cancers in addition to drugs. I would love to have a dog trained for peanut! I would feel so safe! It would be great! Gennie
I think it's a great idea. They have dogs that can sense when someone is going to have a seizure. I'm sure smelling peanutbutter would be easy. The only thing I wonder is if it would be so prevalent that the dog would be going nuts smelling it everywhere. Definitely something to look into. I have no idea where you would find out about such a thing. I don't think you could just have a dog trainer do it. I think it would have to be some kind of "official" working dog for the dog to be allowed into school and public places.
I would imagine that if your son is that sensitive then the smallest amount ingested would harm him, and I wonder if dogs would be able to smell the tiniest amount of contamination in, say, a chocolate bar or something. I think it sounds good, if it could work.
I guess this might work. Just two thoughts...others may be allergic to dogs...and some dog food and treats are made with peanuts, so a dog could cause a reaction if those feeding it were not careful.