Therapy Dogs
If a child or adult in your family is autistic or has other special needs, you can turn to a therapy dog to help protect them. These dogs can be trained to find a specific human if they go missing, and they are also able to stop issues such as meltdowns.
This is already a highly useful job skill for a dog to have, but after the SHTF, it will be even more imperative to have this type of support to keep every member of your family safe.
Diabetes Alert Dogs
Dogs can also be trained to know the smell of diabetes issues. In other words, if a diabetic’s blood sugar begins to spike, a trained dog will smell the difference and alert their owner before they end up dealing with a medical emergency.
Additionally, dogs have been trained to recognize the signs of an upcoming seizure, a PTSD anger outburst, panic attacks and a long list of other medical and mental health complications.
Again, having a trained dog on hand could make the difference between living and dying after the SHTF.