The Des Dillon novel My Epileptic Lurcher is loosely based on the author's life and his lurcher Bailey, who suffers from epilepsy.
In the 1980s, Botez pioneered studies on the effects of lesions to the cerebellum on cognition, including patients with spinocerebellar ataxia, Friedreich's ataxia, and mice with spontaneous mutations causing cerebellar damage, such as GRID2-Lc Lurcher.