Amber Laudicina, from Winston Salem North Carolina, experiences unexpected seizures due to chemotherapy-related brain damage after battling a brain tumor in 2010.
Thankfully, she has an 11-month-old service dog named Koda by her side, whom she has trained to respond when she is having a seizure. And one of those moments was caught on video. Amber was shopping at her local Harris Teeter supermarket. While training her dog in the aisle, Amber begins to exhibit signs of a seizure, including a slight delay in body language and wavering movements. Without so much as a verbal cue, her dog picks up on the change in her demeanor. As Amber slumps to the ground, Koda stays by her side making sure she doesn’t get harmed.
“He saved my life,” Amber said. “He prevented me from actually getting hurt and ending up truly in the hospital with a concussion or something worse.”
Amber also praised the actions of the supermarket employees, saying they went above-and-beyond with their response. “Employees typically don’t sit with me or anything like that. They tend to just stand around and wait for EMTs to arrive,” Amber said. In this case, the assistant manager stayed with her, calling for 911 and talking to her repeatedly to learn what she was experiencing and could she communicate.
“That assistant manager pulled out all the stops,” Amber said. “For as long as I have had service dogs and as long as I have actually been sick, I have never experienced someone take on a situation like she did.”
EMS arrived to check on Amber but she did not need to go to the hospital. Amber has also set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to thank that manager for her life-saving actions.
Store employee, Regina Mitchell, quickly came to Amber's aid. This week, Amber gave back to Regina in a big way. "This was about an employee who wasn't just thinking, 'this is my job.' She was thinking, 'this is a human in an emergency situation and I really need to help take care of her.'"
Amber had launched a GoFundMe, raising more than $2,000 for Regina.
Here is what Amber wrote after posting this most compelling video in which she not only praised her dog Koda but also the associate manager at her Harris Teeter store for sitting with her during the entire episode, something she admits hasn't happened before:
Real Time True Seizure Occurs - this shows the amazing staff at my local Harris and Teeter handling this situation amazingly from beginning to end when medics arrived. Koda is still learning and did very well. The leash unfortunately contributed to a lot of his tasking issues and now tells me he needs to b on a traffic lead. You can train and train for this but you dont know how far youve come until it actually happens. I cant predict my episodes so its truly rare for me to catch it on film. Not that I like showing me in this state, I felt it’s important to show why you shouldnt mess w service dogs. He knew something was up and I should have known better to not be out the way ive been feeling. The first time her barked i wasnt 100% he was truly alerting but after, it was clear and I listened. Now I can know to trust his alerts more and more :) home and resting now.