Sheffield dog named after Meadowhall will be trained to predict seizures "with 100% accuracy"

Meadow, a trainee assistance dog with the Sheffield-based charity Support Dogs, turns two this month.

The charity trains and provides dogs to help adults with epilepsy or a physical disability and autistic children to live safer, more independent lives.

As her sponsor, the shopping centre got to give the white Labrador her name.

Meadowhall is also used as a training ground to help the dogs become comfortable in different environments, like the busy Oasis Dining Quarter, the lifts and stairs.

Meadow has been earmarked for one of Support Dogs’ programmes which trains dogs to give a 100 per cent reliable alert to an epileptic seizure up to an hour before it happens.

Around 1,000 people with epilepsy die each year and research suggests that most of these deaths are sudden and unexpected.

The warning provided by a seizure alert dog means that a client can remove themselves from any danger, and have a seizure in a safe environment.

Support Dogs trainer Joe Dickinson said: “Meadow is very confident. She’s pretty bomb-proof for this programme, really.

“She is turning two and has quite a bit of growing up to do, but already, she is proving to be a fast learner.”

She has already been matched to a client, and is trained to “nudge” them to make them aware of an impending seizure.

Meadow adores mud and Primula cheese.

Joe added: “She’s just so happy and so enthusiastic about everything.

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“When she first came to me, she was described as being ‘as excited about a pebble as she would be about a roast chicken’.”

Meadow is staying with a local family, as Support Dogs does not use kennels, but relies on volunteer foster carers to look after the dogs when they are not at the charity’s training centre on Brightside Lane.

Support Dogs is the only organisation in the UK to provide and train seizure alert dogs.