At the end of her Orangetheory workouts Katherine Wallace checks her results, just like everyone else. Her workout buddy, however, couldn’t care less. Blaze is happy just to get a little rub on the nose or tickle behind the ears.

Then again, her partner, Blaze, is a dog. A two-year-old Golden Doodle service dog. While Orangetheory does not allow pets in the studio, members who require certified service dogs are able to bring them to class.

Although she’d rather be just another person earning her Splat Points, Katherine, 26, is known at her Farmington Hills and Birmingham, Michigan, studios as “the girl with the dog.” But Blaze isn’t just a cute dog. He’s trained to help save Katherine’s life by recognizing when her blood sugar levels drop dangerously.

“All the coaches give me the treadmill on the end so he’s right there on the floor next to me,” Katherine says. “He’ll stand up and scoot as close as he can to the treadmill without stepping on it and he’ll stare at me. That’s his way of alerting me without getting hurt.”

Katherine has had Type 1 diabetes since she was 9 years old. The disease, in which the pancreas produces little to no insulin, has no cure. But Katherine deals with it valiantly, taking in stride the tedious monitoring of her blood sugar levels. Vigilance is critical to avoiding the seizures triggered by dangerous drops in glucose levels.

“Blaze has alerted me when I was on the treadmill that I was dropping,” she says. “Or sometimes when I’ve been rowing, he’s come up and pawed me. It’s a smell thing. It’s so amazing that he can detect smells even at Orangetheory. There are more than 20 sweaty bodies emitting odors, and he’s specific just to mine.”

If Katherine were to have a seizure, the staff knows how to care for Blaze while she is treated by paramedics. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened yet.

Katherine had exercised throughout her life, but lung infections and subsequent pneumonia in July 2018 had left her short of breath and stamina.

“I thought I’d never be able to work out again,” she says.

But when the American Diabetes Association, where Katherine volunteers, was hosting a fundraiser at an Orangetheory Fitness, she figured she’d give the class a try. Katherine and Blaze took their first Orangetheory class in April.