This woman faints up to a dozen times a day. Her dog learned to use his nose to protect her from injury
Diagnosed with POTS, the woman spent 5 years of her life locked up in her home until her wholesome Labrador found a way to save her.
There’s something magical about the love dogs have for their pet parents because they’ll do just about anything for their sake. A woman named Sophie Jackson, who had been suffering from Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (PoTS) for years, found a way to continue to live thanks to her dog, Tashi, reported This Morning. The woman would randomly faint around 15 times a day with no warning due to her condition. As a result, she stopped stepping out of her home until the Labrador came into the picture. In the clip shared on January 19, 2026, Jackson revealed how her canine has been brilliantly using her nose to turn her pet parent's life around.
According to The Daily Mail, Jackson’s condition was discovered back in 2017 when she went from a completely healthy adult to just falling over time and again. At work, on the road, anywhere, she would suddenly faint. Over time, the falls became severe, with broken bones and brain injuries and the embarrassment kept increasing. After many tests, she finally learned she had POTS. The condition causes a person’s heart rate to increase, causing dizziness, nausea, and other symptoms. Dr. Nighat also appeared in the interview to share a little about the condition. She called it a “life-altering condition which causes the autonomic nervous system to become dysregulated."
As a result, the heart rate and blood pressure cannot be controlled. Due to this, the person’s body is unable to adapt to the variations of gravity. “So standing up, your blood pressure drops and you fall faint,” Dr. Nighat noted. “I didn't know what it would mean for my life, I didn't know what it would mean for my career. I was worried about what would be next,” Jackson remarked. While doctors gave her a heads-up to continue life as usual, her symptoms wouldn’t allow her to do the same. The way she kept falling, she decided to stay trapped in her home for the next five years out of fear.
That’s when she got the idea of getting a medical assistance dog and met Tashi. The canine worked her magic by using her olfactory senses to detect any increases in heart rate or blood pressure and was able to alert Jackson anywhere between 5 and 7 minutes before her fainting spell. Jackson froze samples with odors at the time she experienced the dizziness, and Tashi was trained to detect these odors in the woman. Dr. Nighat noted that dogs can even detect shallow breathing, so the moment Jackson starts feeling off, Tashi knows she has to get to work.
This helps the woman prepare in advance, and she doesn’t have to hide or get worried about falling randomly. For Jackson, the canine has given her life back. “Tashi has been scent trained to me specifically for my condition - so she can detect the odours in me,” she explained, adding that due to her alertness, she can now live instead of just “existing.” According to the University of Utah Health, this condition affects around 1 to 3 million people in the U.S. Richard Shelton, MD, a cardiologist at University of Utah Health, noted, “With POTS, there is an increase of at least 30 beats per minute when going from lying down to standing up without a significant drop in blood pressure.”
According to a study published by the PLOS Journal, studies have shown that there is a 100% rate of dogs distinguishing between positive and negative samples to detect diseases. Dr. Zoe Parr-Cortes, a veterinarian, has been studying dogs and how human emotions affect them, reported Kinship. She revealed that dogs can be trained to detect differences in body odors. “While we don’t know what exactly dogs are smelling, we know that dogs can be trained to detect changes in cortisol in humans,” she explained. Thanks to Tashi, life feels “amazing” again for Jackson. “I'm saying yes to things. The doors are opening back up,” she noted.
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