Let’s raise dog for dementia: Assistance Dogs for Individuals with Dementia Using ICT Devices:

Wearing ICT devices may be somewhat burdensome for assistance dogs. However, other assistance dogs have been trained to pull wheel chairs, oxygen tanks, etc. Guide dogs for the blind often work under stressful and dangerous circumstances. Dogs have a natural tendency to share their enjoyment with their owners. By wearing ICT devices, they can assist their owners with dementia, increase their owner’s security, communication, and convenience. They also give the owners healing through their fur, expressions, and movements, which ICT devices alone cannot provide. In this way, dogs may be eager to assist their owners and family members living under afflictive situations caused by dementia.

Traditionally, to train assistance dogs required professional trainers, several years, and large expenses. Furthermore, to be recognized as an assistance dog, the dog must pass severe tests. However, the activity of assistance dogs for dementia is mainly limited to home care. Even outside of the home, most owners have normal vision, hearing, physical ability, and they still can notice common dangers. If devices were appropriately mounted on the dogs, and if tasks to be executed by the dogs were selected for owners, selected dogs can become “semi” assistant dogs for individuals with dementia in shorter training periods. Recently, various resources such as videos, DVDs, guide books for training dogsare published. The website also provides a lot of information on how to breed and train dogs. Therefore, some amateurs can have the capability to train the assistance dogs.

The regular routine and responsibility of caring dog are thought to be beneficial for individuals with dementia, who do not have any kind of scheduled activity for the day [3]. Further, a dementia patient being able to stay in their home longer and with greater independence is priceless [3].This saves money for the family and the healthcare system.
A sharp increase in the number of individuals with dementia has been predicted for the near future. Additionally, the number of seniors living alone is expected to increase. Concurrently, the number of dog lovers is also increasing. Therefore, we consider assistance dogs wearing ICT devices to be a reasonable intervention of assisting individuals with dementia. This idea will be published on a website. Further appropriate support plans will be desirable to be developed by many professional trainers, engineers, amateurs, and those in the healthcare field. We expect trials and results will be also published on the website to accelerate development of smarter interventions and implementation of Human-Computer-Animal Interface (HCAI).