Haylee has postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which means she often passes out from dizzy spells.
Haylee has postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which means she often passes out from dizzy spells.
A loyal service dog that can carry out massages on his cardiac patient owner has become a social media star.
Jake was assigned to owner Haylee Graves, 28, after she was diagnosed with a rare medical condition that makes her heart race dangerously as a reaction to anxiety.
Now Haylee’s outings with her life-saving pooch have become a huge social media hit.
Haylee, who hails from Massachusetts, has postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which means she often passes out from dizzy spells.
Jake is trained to recognize medical episodes before they happen and even perform deep pressure therapy to help bring Haylee’s heart rate down.
She posts videos about Jake on her dedicated TikTok page, where several posts have gone viral with millions of views.
One clip of her interacting with a young child and explaining what a service dog is has been viewed 2.5 million times.
Haylee accompanied the video with the message: “Such a wholesome moment while we were at the zoo today! This momma deserves a mother of the year award.”
Haylee told Zenger News: “Jake is a medical/cardiac alert service dog. He is task trained to do multiple things and to assist me with my conditions.
“He is scent trained for high heart rate, and he can pick things up and give them to me, carry things for me, help with mobility, retrieve medications, and much more.”
Haylee added: “Jake loves to play ball, and go swimming. We also do AKC [American Kennel Club] events such as rally, and obedience.
“We never expected Jake to become so popular and well-known on TikTok.
“The idea of starting our TikTok page was to help spread correct and accurate information and education on service animals, what they can be used for, how to act around them, and what they can and can’t do.
“I’m just so happy that we did grow as much as we have because I know the word is getting out there.”
Haylee added: “Surprisingly, my interactions with children go better than adults. Most children know how to react around a service dog, whereas adults don’t.
“Just yesterday standing in the checkout line, I had an older man walk up to us and reach his hand out in front of Jake’s face to pet him.
“Jake, knowing better, backed up a few steps and I kindly just asked the man to not pet him as he is a working service dog.
“Thankfully he apologized and said okay, but that’s not always the case. People sometimes will get mad at us when we don’t allow them to pet Jake.”
