MIDDLEBURG - In 1789, King Frederick of Prussia once said that a dog is a “man’s best friend.”

Ask Lisa Casson, a 43 year old Middleburg runner, what she thinks of her dog and the sentiment is the same.

“She is my furry angel,” said Casson, talking about her three year old service dog, a hound and pit mix. “She can sense when my medical situation goes bad and knows what to do.”

Casson smartly advises and guards the name of her dog only because, as a working dog, the dog’s focus is to not be distracted by friendly people seeing her ever-smiling doggie face next to Casson while she runs.

Casson, who has run the River Run 15K, handfuls of local 5K and is endeavoring to run Walt Disney’s Dopey Challenge in January 2024 and the October 2023 Marine Corps Marathon. Casson’s warmup is the upcoming Disney Spring Challenge in May; a 5K a 10k and a 10 miler.”

“The Dopey Challenge, my fifth one, is a 5k, a 10k, a half marathon and a full marathon, all run in four consecutive days in Orlando,” said Casson, about a 14-16 minute distance pace runner. “The Marine Corps Marathon in October is my test. I finished my last Dopey marathon with seven seizures and a Margarita in my hand.”

The challenge, not withstanding the running of a ton of miles in a weekend, is that Casson has been experiencing seizures and blackouts since six years old with little affirmation of a cause.

“The seizures started at six and the doctors explained them away as something from a traumatic experience; epilectic, which I never had,” said Casson, married three years to husband Chuck. “None of the seizures over my lifetime have shown evidence on any scans.”

After tons of tests and scans and doctors, Casson’s family was given an evaluation of a functional neurological disorder.

“That is sort of like a software malfunction in my brain,” said Casson lightly quipped. “All the tests were fine, but the seizures kept coming and the blackouts kept coming.”

As a youth, mom, Linda Elder, encouraged Casson to just be very careful, but to live my life.

“Of course, she was scared, but she did not want the seizures to run my life in a negative way,” said Casson.

Casson got some clarity in her life situation in September 2020 after a series of 78 seizures and a possible mini stroke while working 15 hours a day as a daycare manager.

“That year I woke up one morning and could not speak,” said Casson, who grew up in Middleburg. “It still comes and goes; my speech still has occasional issues.”

Prior to the September 2020 events, Casson was running a bit, but stopped for a bit before realizing that the running was a good part of her feeling better.

“The doctors were pushing therapy, but nothing was working,” said Casson, who, after losing her speech for two years (Sept. 2020-2023), learned fluent sign language and other non-verbal communications skills in preparation for her loss of speech episodes. “Nothing from EEG (brain scans), MRIs and all of them showed little.”

Casson went to a service dog training center; Double Six Service Dogs in Lake City, for about a year to see if a service dog would help.

“Once a week for a year, I went to Lake City with a dog they found for me, the one I have now, and we worked together and I trained her,” said Casson. “She picked up alot of the techniques very quickly. I did a lot of follow up training at home that she learned very quickly.”

Part of the dog training is to determine what sense; smell, chemical, sight, the dog would focus on with the client to determine that safe signals.

“We were going to spit in a jar and let her smell it to see if the chemical change in my body would trigger her,” said Casson. “She ultimately developed a stare right in front of me and whine when she sensed something was wrong.”

Now that Casson has had her dog for the past three years, the amazing transformation to being a health body guard has grown. One glitch in the regime is that Casson and her dog were in a recent car accident and caused major leg damage; two torn ACLs, to the dog.

“That limits her running to about three miles,” said Casson. “Two miles is her longest run when we train at home. It took some time for her to overcome her separation anxiety, but she goes on the trips with me.”

The dog’s job is to monitor Casson’s reaction to her workouts, and like a good coach, sense when she is going a little too hard.

“When I go to the YMCA and take a class, she will stand in front of me when she senses I’m stressing too much in the class,” said Casson. “If I ignore her because I’m stubborn, she will get closer to a point that she lays on me to stop me from moving. She’s pretty insistent.”

In the Casson house, where Casson knows the dangers of being near a stove, a shower and walking around things in front of me present opportunities of danger for Casson with her random seizures.

“Initially, I had to bring her into the rooms, but she comes into the bathroom or kitchen on her own if she hears the shower come on or if I click the stove,” said Casson. “She will go get someone in the house if I blackout in the house. We have the doors now equipped for her to be able to click the handle to open the door.”

For now, Casson and her dog are inseparable.

“We are very close and she will be excited at the finish line every time,” said Casson. “The bond is very strong.”

Definitively, Casson is certain that her running and her dog have made the biggest improvements in her life.

“I started to run again and then wanted to do Dopey again and that has been my focus,” said Casson. “If I’m negative about all this, my life get super depressed and that’s not going to help. Each day is a blessing. Tomorrow is not promised.”