[nagdu] Diabetic alert dogs and how alert dogs are preventing a need for a guide dog!

Thu Nov 8 19:29:16 UTC 2012

Dar,
If I read your post right, you are concerned with the fact that someone 
brings a dog into a place where you're at.  You are totally blind and are 
worried about if that dog will scare the crap out of you - it growls 
menacinginly at your dog or it actually tries to attack your dog.  Is this 
correct?

I hear you on this and your concerns are very valid.  I've been a guide dog 
user for a very long time and have been the target of several attacks on my 
dogs over the years.  My limited vision doesn't always see that there's a 
menacing dog nearby but I'll hear it if it snarls at my dog.  It does scare 
the crap out of me.

What I find is that many people don't care if their dog is socialized for 
public access - I'm talking about pets.  People don't bother to train their 
dogs to walk nice on a leash. In earlier times, my dogs have been accosted 
by nasty pets that are not under control by their humans.  Now that same 
problem remains the same only now there are people who claim hidden 
disability and their dog is a service dog.  They may really have a 
disability but they do not know that they have standards that their dog must 
adhere to.  the humans don't give a rat's behind if their dog bothers a 
working guide dog or service dog walking along doing its job.  This is a 
huge problem in the city where people have to walk their dogs and they have 
all these little ankle biters.

Now, add to this mix the past lax rules of ADA which allowed for anything 
someone called a "service animal".  The owners have had no training on 
proper ettiquete with having a dog in public where pets aren't allowed.  It 
has taken us too many years - 20 years - to finally tighten up the ADA 
rules.  The horse is out of the barn and now we want to shut the door. 
Well, too late now - it's out.  And there are problems for us with 
litgitimate guide and service dogs that actually are trained to perform a 
task to mitigate our disabilities.  And there's no real way to stop the 
abuse of ADA.  The ADA prevents this by not allowing the having to show 
proof via ID cards, vests, whatever.  This won't work anyway because people 
can always make IDs or buy vests on the Internet.

I think this all boils down to educating businesses to the ADA and it's 
rules concerning service dogs.  We have to educate them to know that they 
are within their rights to kick out individuals who do not control their 
dogs properly.  They have to realize that they have this right and will not 
be sued.  If they are, they think they'll lose and that will cost them lots 
of money.  Business owners are afraid of violating the ADA and put up with 
the problem children.  And, of course, there are those business people who 
don't care about ADA and try to deny us our rights of access.

A vest or ID doesn't make a dog a real service dog and it really doesn't 
make sense to rail on that issue.  We really need to deal with the HUGE 
issue of ill behaved dogs in public and what can we do about that issue.

BTW, hope the new dog is working out well for you.

Lyn and Landon
"Education creates tolerance towards diversity."
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "d m gina" <dmgina at samobile.net>
To: <nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 7:50 AM
Subject: Re: [nagdu] Diabetic alert dogs and how alert dogs are preventing a 
need for a guide dog!

Hello,
Thanks for sharing, and yes even my guide lets me know if I am to low.
My question never got answered for me to be satisfied.
As a total, and this strange dog comes into play where the person says
it is a diabetic dog, nothing on the dog to indicate that the dog is a
service dog, just a person coming into the room with a chain collar on
dog claiming that it is a diabetic dog.
No coat of any kind no nothing.
So if a total was trying to make sure that we didn't have anyone just
bringing in their pet how would we know.
It is obvious we didn't know at this convention.
We as guide dog users are trying to make sure we can keep working our
dogs for as long as possible with out any more rules to the game.
Where I am not impressed that my neighbor can put a collar on his
shepherd and claim it is a service dog a diabetic dog.
I hope I made myself clear this time.
Now my neighbor isn't claiming this, just follow the thread of writing 
thanks,
Original message:
> Hi gang,

> I will only speak to diabetic alert dogs, since there seem to be some 
> questions. There are numerous programs that train diabetic alert dogs and 
> even owner-trainers. They range from the rather large and very 
> well-established Dogs 4 Diabetics (d4d) in Concord, CA to smaller/newer 
> programs to owner-trained dogs. d4d is an ADI member program. ADI is the 
> equivalent of IGDF, so d4d is very highly regarded in general. Some of the 
> smaller/newer programs do a better job than others, so those are 
> buyer-beware. Really, though, diabetic alerting is largely a matter of 
> fairly straightforward scent training...so it doesn't take that long and 
> many competent people have decided to train their own dogs. That can be a 
> just fine option, too. Almost everyone from d4d to owner-trainer uses 
> fairly similar standards. The dogs are trained to alert their person when 
> the person's blood glucose begins to drop too low (60-70, normal is at 
> least 80). If the dog
>  can tell the person who is at 65, the person should not be too 
> incapacitated at that point to do the things they need to do to help 
> themselves raise their blood glucose. This is especially critical when the 
> diabetic (usually type 1 diabetic, btw, but not ALWAYS) is asleep. 
> Diabetics are at serious risk of a phenomenon called "Dead in Bed". Their 
> numbers get too low while they sleep and they slip into a coma and are 
> dead or confused and unable to help themselves and can die even if "awake" 
> in the morning...no sugar is reaching their brain and so they can't think 
> straight to drink juice or swallow glucose tablets or whatever and that's 
> it. Very sad and scary. The beauty here is that a human's sleep cycle is 
> quite long...multiple hours. A dog's sleep cycle is FAR shorter...I want 
> to say about 90 minutes or so. This means that the dog is mostly awake and 
> can smell the low on their person and wake them up to tell them at many 
> different points
>  throughout the night. The dogs are generally taught to alert to the lows 
> and not really the highs because the highs are SO easy to smell...even you 
> or I can smell it, no problem. The ketones smell really sweet when someone 
> is running high, so the diabetic's breath will reek! Dogs often will start 
> to alert the highs once they get that their job is to tell their human 
> when they're smelling funny, but dogs who are rewarded too often for 
> alerting to high often start to only alert to high because it's so easy 
> for them to smell. What we really NEED the dog alerting to is the lows, 
> though, so can't let the dogs get lazy and stop smelling for the harder to 
> catch lows!

> Long story short - there are very legitimate glucose level alerting dogs 
> for diabetics. I have no idea if the St. Bernard was one - that's a whole 
> different ball of wax that I won't touch - but at least now everyone knows 
> more about the dogs for diabetics.

> Oh, I should mention since I think my email makes it sound like maybe 
> these dogs only need to be home use - that is far from the case. The dogs 
> will also do things like ride close enough to someone driving and be able 
> to alert the person in case their sugar goes out of whack while they are 
> driving. (I'm sure everyone can see how this is a useful service!) A dog 
> may sit under a programmer's desk at work and alert them that they're 
> low...big bonus for everyone since when sugar goes low, brain function 
> declines and suddenly you've got a programmer probably making all kinds of 
> errors. All sorts of things like that, so the dogs do need public access 
> and protection just like guide dogs and other kinds of more commonly 
> recognized service dogs.

> Cool to note is that d4d actually gets a number of their dogs from none 
> other than the nearby GDB. It's a good career change. Often a dog that 
> won't make the cut as a guide can make a great alert dog. I'm sure you all 
> know how big the percentage is of guide dog handlers who need guides 
> because of diabetes complications, so actually getting a well-trained 
> glucose level alert dog into the hands of a young diabetic is a wonderful 
> way to help them keep their numbers MUCH better controlled and postpone or 
> even prevent that person from ever needing a Guide due to diabetes 
> complications. I think this is great as long as it's done well, ethically, 
> safely, etc!

> Dogs rock. It's people I sometimes wonder about. ;) j/k (sort of!)

> Dailyah Rudek
> The ProBoneO Program, Director

>> ________________________________
>> From: Julie J. <julielj at neb.rr.com>
>> To: "NAGDU Mailing List, the National Association of Guide Dog Users" 
>> <nagdu at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Monday, November 5, 2012 4:21 AM
>> Subject: Re: [nagdu] In question please

>> Yes, there are dogs that can alert to changes in blood sugar levels. 
>> There is even a program that trains this type of dog. I'm remembering 
>> it's in the northwest, Washington or Oregon? Of course the dog wouldn't 
>> have had to come from this or any program to be trained to alert to the 
>> guy's medical condition.

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-- 
--Dar
skype: dmgina23
  FB: dmgina
www.twitter.com/dmgina
every saint has a past
every sinner has a future

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