When our daughter was first diagnosed with diabetes, someone messaged us almost immediately about getting a service dog for her. We had never even heard of them, most people haven’t. When you hear about a dog that can detect blood sugar changes based on salivary enzymes it sounds like a miracle. You definitely want one. The first video I saw was of one alerting parents during their sleep to a dangerous low their child was having. What am amazing dog! So you start researching. There are a few companies out there that specialize in their training, some more reputable than others. There’s also a program to train one yourself. With the additional stress T1 brings to your life, training a dog sounds ridiculous. Then you look up the price of one already trained: 15-20,000 dollars! Training one on your own sounds a bit better. Now, if you’re a normal person who doesn’t have an extra 20,000 dollars to buy a dog that sniffs out blood sugar, then how to do you come up with the money?

Well, we were fortunate enough to have built up a large enough community (mostly through our hobbies) to raise the money on GoFundMe. We made a GoFundMe account for our daughter, telling her story and how helpful the dog is, and somehow magically we raised the money in a week!

We called the company. We decided to go with the most reputable one (Diabetic Alert Dogs of America) and gave them the initial 2500 to get the ball rolling. They found us a beautiful silver lab, and then we waited.

Oh how we waited. We were initially quoted 7 months of training, but it took a year. Which is fine, because we wanted the dog to be as prepared as possible, but quoting a diabetic family a specific time window for something that may provide relief from a constant onslaught of worry and stress isn’t a good idea. It was torture. We got constant updates on Flikr (who in the hell uses Flikr in 2017?) of pictures and video. Other than that we received weekly emails on how her training was going. We really didn’t know what to expect, which is why I’m writing this. That way you can have a “day in the life of” glimpse of what getting a dog is like.

So does she provide relief from the constant onslaught of worry and stress? Hell nah. When you first get the dog it’s OVERWHELMING to say the least. When you’re a diabetic family, life is hard enough. Try throwing a huge dog in that mix. It’s like having another kid. We’re still not sure what we expected. When I think back I think we expected this rigid, flawless, police dog-like dog. And that she is not.

When you first get your dog the trainer brings her to your front door. We were extremely excited so we headed out front. Our cat was in the front yard and our dog, Madeline, took off running after her and ripped the leash right out of the trainer’s hands. Down she went into the woods behind our house. That was our first introduction. A year of impulse control training? Gimme a break. Still, she’d flown from out west to the east coast, maybe she was stressed out.

The trainer spent a few days with us, teaching us her obedience commands and how to bring your service dog to different places we frequent. She excelled at all of these skills. The biggest drawback is that at the house you’re supposed to keep her tethered, that’s right, in other words tied up, to wherever the diabetic is. This was the most surprising aspect of it to us. At no point were we told ahead of time that you were going to have to basically treat your dog in a slave-like manner. Nonetheless, our trainer Todd was amazing and a T1 himself, so we connected with us well during all the outings and at-home training.

So what about alerting? You know, the point you bought a 15,000 dollar dog. Well, when we first got her she alerted the trainer some whenever his blood sugar was off, or at least seemed to. That’s half the challenge. Figuring out if she’s actually alerting. She paws to alert, but she also paws to illicit attention if she’s trying to tell you something. She paws if she needs to potty too. We’ve tried to discourage this but when she’s tied up she can’t exactly go to the door. That’s why we let her roam a small percentage of the time as long as she stays close to our little one. As for consistency in alerting, she just isn’t. We contacted the agency, and you sign paper work that pretty much gets them off the hook for any liability, and they say to give it three months. Well it’s been 2 months and she misses blood sugars ALL THE TIME. Don’t get me wrong, she’s caught a couple of good ones (at stores, and sleeping beside her at night, though we weren’t even asleep yet).

And we’ve stuck to the protocol. We’ve kept her tethered mostly. We’ve even kept up with the training. Did I mention that? You’re supposed to keep up with the training using alerting samples 4-5 times a day! Imagine the struggle of your life and then add extra training in there after you’ve dropped what you could have paid for a car on. Why can every other form of obedience be dialed in but not alerting? Well it’s a different diabetic than they were trained on one, and there’s got to be a great deal of variability between a 50 year old man and a 4 year old little girl. And two, at the end of the day they’re still just dogs. That was the craziest part about it to me. She still makes mistakes and poops in the house. Can you believe that? Imagine your $15,000 dollar dog pooping in your house and imagine how you’d feel the first time it happens. She still get’s crazy excited about stuff (and we have land behind our house to exercise her, she isn’t underexercised).

Don’t get me wrong, the dog is beautiful, and after a LONG 2 months she’s a wonderful addition to the family. She also picks up blood sugars from time to time. Is she worth it? Not in the least bit, not as of yet. Since we raised money from our friends for her, it’s a terrible feeling saying that. But I refuse to let her not be worth it eventually, which is why I’ve stepped up her training -more on that later. But for now, I just want you to know what to expect when you go through this process. It’s hard, it’s expensive, and it needs to come with careful consideration.