Medic- Alert Service Dogs

Posted on 30. Apr, 2007 by in Education, Glycogen Storage Disease Type 1A, hypoglycemia, Medical Service Dogs, research

Last year when my boys were staying at Shand’s Hospital/ University of Florida, our favorite physician mentioned they had some Malteagles (a maltese/ beagle) that needed a good home. We like dogs, but with (at the time) three small boys with a chronic medical disease, we felt it best to not even consider it. However, within half an hour last night we went from “We probably won’t ever own a dog, but if we did it would stay outside.” to “Where can we get one, how fast can it be trained??? We need an inside dog that sleeps next to our children NOW!!!”.
Why the sudden change? We watched an episode of a show called Nature on PBS http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/dog/medicaldogs.html where a child with Type 1 Diabetes has a dog who can sense, or perhaps smell when the 13 year old boy’s blood sugar is dropping. The dog will then either wake the child and/ or notify the parents.

My greatest fear as a parent is that one of older children on 24/7 cornstarch will throw up their cornstarch and go back to bed without telling me, I’ll sleep through an alarm to give him his 2am starch, and I’ll wake up at 6am with my son either in a coma or dead. Or, another scenerio, the tube connected to the feeding pump simply detatches from the tube connected to my younger boys that don’t tolerate cornstarch yet, it falls on the floor instead of the bedwetting alarm http://www.southwestmedical.com/Incontinence/Bed_Wetting_Devices/Wet_Chek_Bed_Wetting_Control_Device/565p0 we have to notify us of just such an event, and I wake up to that kid either in a coma, or dead. (And I wonder why I have trouble sleeping at night when I’m exhausted).

Could you imagine how wonderful a service dog like this would be!?!?! On saturday when my son went swimming for an hour, by the time we got him dried off he just sat on the floor to play with blocks. We tested his blood sugar and he was down to 35. He showed no symptoms, we just knew he was acting “tired” and he had been swimming. What a tremendous peace of mind a dog would be! Not that we wouldn’t continue to test their blood glucose levels, but it would be such a relief to know there was someone, or somedog, that would be on the look-out too.

Were we able to obtain such a dog my fears of sending our children to school would be drastically diminished. Perhaps a dog trained to recognize low blood sugar would be even more effective than a person trained to do the same. The difficulty may lie in the school accepting the responsibility of being trained to respond to the dog. In Idaho I imagine even that will be a fight.

I knew dogs could be trained for a multitude of tasks, including the obvious assistance for the blind and deaf, locating missing persons, and bomb sniffing, but it never crossed my mind that they could be trained to recognize hypoglycemia- or at least it’s scent. How grateful I am to people and organizations such as Dogs 4 Diabetics http://dogs4diabetics.com. Now the only problem lies in finding someone or agency who trains these exceptional dogs. So far we haven’t had any success finding any in Idaho. If you find one, or have any suggestions as to how to go about finding one, please let us know! Obviously we prefer a Malteagle. Aside from being adorable dogs, they’re helping us cure GSD. http://glycogenstoragedisease.com/

5 Responses to “Medic- Alert Service Dogs”

  1. Connie Silvester

    03. Aug, 2007

    We have thought of that, too. We are going to train our lab to wake up to the alarm and then lick our kid to death so she will wake up and take her cornstarch. (Okay…our daughter is 4 yrs. now…but in the future…)How do you train the dog to recognize hypoglycemia, though?

    Our dog is really smart and is only a year old. We are trying to get over a huge hurdle of carsickness…can’t have a service dog that gets carsick. If you get a dog, make sure he/she doesn’t get carsick.

    Anyway, do you have any addition info. on this? (Dog training to smell hypoglycemia…not the carsick part.)

    Also, we were in Idaho this summer, but I didn’t have time to look you up. We are going back, maybe in January. We are thinking of relocating there, either in Star or in Eagle. I did remember that you are there, though, and it was tough knowing you were close, but I couldn’t meet you. I’ve not met an actual GSD family, yet.

    Also, if we do move next summer, how on earth would we get our poor dog there? Between the cornstarch, the potty breaks, and the dog getting sick…that would be pretty slow traveling!

    Please let us know about the dogs…because we have the dog, she’s gradually getting trained, but haven’t decided to go the whole 9 yards for service dog training yet…and how would they train for sniffing out hypoglycemia?

    Thanks,
    Connie Silvester from So. Ca.

  2. Jillian

    04. Aug, 2007

    Hi Connie, I hope you do move here. I’ve never met another GSD family either. We’d live within 10-20 minutes of eachother. Sounds like you have a good dog to train… other than the whole carsickness thing. When we first started our search for hypoglycemia sniffing service dog we came across an excellent organization called Dogs 4 Diabetics. They’re based in Concord, California, but were unfortunately unable to help us because 1. We don’t live in California and 2. They limit themselves to working exclusively with diabetics.
    Through their website site, however, we found out that they had labradoodles donated to them to become service dogs by an organization in Boise, Idaho called Genesis Sevice Dogs http://www.genesisservicedogs.com/default.asp. We got a hold of them, and while they can’t train the dogs, they did just have a new litter, and are going to give our oldest son a puppy. My husband is going to help them out with some web site work, and a little marketing advice, and when they take their puppies to be donated to Dogs 4 Diabetics, we’re hoping that they will be able to get some tips as to how to train these dogs.
    From my very limited understanding, I think there is a certain scent that people who are becoming hypoglycemic give off. They then train the dogs to recognize the smell and respond appropriately. From the small amount of research we’ve done, we’ve found out that some dogs will recognize that their owner’s blood sugar is getting low naturally. The trick is finding out how the dog tries to tell you. I’ll pass on any info I get to the blog and you. If you make any more discoveries, please share!

  3. Connie

    04. Aug, 2007

    Dogs are amazing. Our dog trainer has a service dog that can smell when she is going to have a seizure. He can dial 911 on the telephone and all sorts of things.

    So far, our dog may have been receiving covert training from our daughter; our dog gets totally in my way if I’m trying to test her blood sugar while she’s sleeping. But I want the dog in the room…just in case she decides to smell a low blood sugar and alert me…. I need to start training her to respond to the alarm. It’s really easy to do, but I haven’t begun yet.

    If you have my email, feel free to write me.

  4. Amy

    10. Sep, 2007

    I have been doing an online search on how to train a dog to detect low blood sugar and have not been able to find anything and came across this positing. I have a Border Collie/Sheltie mix who is very smart and loves to work. I would like to train him to detect low blood sugar levels since I am hypoglycemic and live alone, and often get low without realizing it. I don’t even know how to determine if he is a good candidate for this type of detection. Has anyone discovered any tips on where to begin?

  5. Jillian

    11. Sep, 2007

    I’ve heard rumors that they use vials of normal blood and vials of hypoglycemic blood to train dogs. The trainers place them at different places in the room and every time the dog sniffs at the vial of low blood sugar, they praise him and give him a treat. If he goes for the normal blood, they just don’t do anything.
    Again, these are rumors, I’m not really sure how it is done. We’re just in the “training a puppy to be a service dog” stage.
    Although, whenever we have a hypoglycemic episode we take the puppy to the kid and let him sniff and lick (something we don’t normally allow). We also give him lots of praise, and I suppose we should give him a treat. Hope this helps, please let us know if you find out anything else.

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