A new best friend
Diabetic-alert dog coming to aid Bryant resident
Suzanne Crowley of Bryant is afraid of what might happen when she sleeps at night, and she is turning to a dog for help. “I’ve been a diabetic for 25 years,” the Bryant resident said. “When you have had diabetes that long, you lose the ability to feel when your blood sugar goes up or down.”
For people with Type 1 diabetes, a night’s sleep without medications or eating anything can cause blood-sugar levels to either soar or crash. A high sugar level in the blood causes damage to organs, as well as blurry vision and dizziness and, if it persists, can lead to unconsciousness. Plummeting blood sugar can go down so low a person can fall into a coma. For Crowley, her blood-sugar level falls at night. “I used to be able to feel the difference, even in my sleep,” she said. “I would dream in high speed and wake up knowing what was happening, and drink orange juice.”
Her doctor helped her find ways to stabilize her blood sugar, and for the nightly “crashes,” he suggested a diabetic-alert dog. Crowley will be joined by her service dog, a black Labrador retriever named Koda, in June.
“He is being trained to tap me and wake me up when he finds
my blood sugar is low,” she said. “He weighs about 110 pounds — I should certainly notice when his paw is smacking me.”
Crowley found her dog with the help of the National Institute for Diabetic Alert Dogs, a company in California.
“Lilly Grace of NIDAD sent me a detailed questionnaire about my lifestyle, my family and the animals in our house and our activities,” Crowley said.
“We look at the lifestyle of the person,” Grace said. “Are they an active person who runs marathons on the weekends, or someone who sits and knits on the couch? We match that profile with the temperament of a dog.”
The next step is to select a trainer. Grace said people looking for a diabetic-alert dog should “do their homework,” and get references about trainers from service-dog owners.
Kristin Minnie is a trainer and the owner of Local Bark, also in California, and has been training Koda for five months. She said training starts with advanced obedience and the same kind of scent training as that given to law enforcement drug dogs.
Crowley played an active role in Koda’s training as her diabetic-alert dog.
“I was told to suck on cotton balls and breathe through them every time I took my blood-sugar reading. Then I would put it in a jar for that reading and freeze it,’ she said. “Koda’s been sniffing my spit for months now.”
With that training, the dog will be able to identify Crowley’s blood-sugar readings from below 40, which is seriously low and demands attention, through the normal range to levels higher than 300, which also need immediate treatment.
“He will be able to identify each change and react differently to each one and know how I might react at each level,” Crowley said.
Crowley has only seen Koda in a picture, but to acclimate the dog to his person, he has also been living with a T-shirt Crowley wore for several days and a stuffed toy dog that was in the Crowley home for a while, in contact with the family and their pets. minnie will come to Bryant in June to introduce Koda to his new home and the person who will become the center of his life.
“We will be starting their relationship together,” Minnie said.
“We will test his response to alert conditions, and we will be going around town together to make him familiar with the places Crowley goes.”
Crowley said she has cats, other dogs and gerbils at home.
“I also have horses, and I have exposed Koda to them,” Minnie said. “Suzanne is also very active, so a younger dog is a good match because of his energy level.”
The trainer also said Labs make excellent service dogs.
“They are bred to be partners with us,” Minnie said. “They want to please and be around people. They have a gentle personality, but they can be persistent, and that is good for an alert dog. They won’t stop trying.”
“He will be with me 24/7,” Crowley said of Koda. “Kristin and Koda will be training me for three days on how to work with him.”
Crowley said she believes Koda will be the first diabetic-alert dog in Arkansas. He will arrive in mid-june.
“I think Suzanne is looking forward to being with Koda, and I think he is, too,” Minnie said.
For more information about the National Institute for Diabetic Alert Dogs, visit its website, www.nidad.com.
Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline. com.