The Impact Service Dogs Have for Muscular Dystrophy Patients

The words "service dog" typically conjures up mental images of a well-trained dog sporting a red vest with bold white lettering and a specially designed harness, carefully leading a blind person through an intersection. That’s because traditionally, service dogs are typically paired with people who are blind or have low vision. 

More recently though, service dogs have been paired with people who not only have disabilities like blindness, but also those who have other types of disorders and ailments such as autism and epilepsy. The benefits of service dogs go beyond the physical assistance that they provide to their owners.  Dogs are now being used to fight mental health and loneliness in the elderly and hospital bound patients and researchers are even going so far as to use dogs to help fight against diseases like cancer by having specially trained dogs ‘sniff’ out tumors for early detection.

More and more, service dogs and even some other types of animals are being used in a variety of settings. For example, service dogs are now even being used by people with neuromuscular disorders like muscular dystrophy and it has had a positive effect on their independent and quality of life.

When someone says that they have been diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, they have in fact been diagnosed with a number of progressive diseases that causes weakness and loss of muscle mass.  Although many patients who have MD have no family history of it, it is typically caused by a gene mutation that somehow interferes with the production of the healthy proteins that are needed to keep muscles healthy.

There are many different kind of muscular dystrophies and they can cause a variety of symptoms that seem to show-up mainly boys in their childhood. It’s not however uncommon for women to develop muscular dystrophy in adulthood.  All that to say, that muscular dystrophy is complicated and causes complicated symptoms.

Since MD is basically a variety of disorders that can target a variety of muscles in the body, some patients will eventually lose their ability to walk, and others may have trouble breathing or even swallowing. Sadly, like many other degenerative diseases out there, there is no cure.  Patients have the option to take medication to help manage some of the symptoms and maybe even slow the progression of the disease. There are also other things that patients can do to help maintain their independence while fighting MD, such as investing in a service dog.

More than just “man’s best friend”

Service dogs are much more than a furry companion who idealizes their master. These dogs are trained to help their human partner by doing tasks that may be difficult to accomplish due to a disability or disorder. For example, someone who has muscular dystrophy and who may have lost the dexterity in their fingers can rely on a service dog to help flip on a light or pull open a door. Services dogs have also been used to alert their deaf / hard of hearing owner that the fire alarm is going off or assist their blind / low vision owner with navigation through city streets. 

Service dogs have been around since World War II when dogs were used to help wounded soldiers.  Since that time, the popularity of service dogs and an understanding of what they can do have grown tremendously.  Today, dogs are being trained worldwide to provide assistance to those who need it.