“I discovered your amazing training methods while searching for ” trained diabetes alert dogs.” I am new to all of this. Our 5 year old daughter was recently diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. I have no idea where to begin. Do you know of any reputable breeders and or trainers who will partially train diabetes alert dogs? I understand that much training will need to happen at home regardless, but just wondering what is available close to home.” Stephanie
The first step is to give yourself time to process the new diagnosis. Explore how you will live with it and figure out how to stabilize it. There are many great technologies available today that are more cost and time effective and accurate to use than a service dog. A service dog should be among the last way considered to mitigate a medical condition rather than the first way. Taking on the life of a dog is a huge additional responsibility on top of a medical condition!
Once you have talked with your health care provider and determined that a service dog might be a good course of action for your family, choose a breed (or mix) that suits your family and lifestyle. Look for sound health and temperament of the parents (health screens for any conditions that are typical of the breed), find a breeder that ensures the mother is not stressed during pregnancy, does Early Neurological Stimulation.
Look for breeders that raise their pups with the Puppy Culture or Avi Dog programs. The most common breeds used as service dogs (golden retriever, labrador retriever and standard poodle) are chosen due to their biddability and ease of bonding to handlers.
Your best bet is to find a breeder who keeps the dogs to at least 8.5 weeks of age and starts socialization with kids, adults, lots of environmental enhancement such as moving the rearing box to different rooms in the house, introduces different toys periodically, does early neurological stimulation that helps to create a more resilient adult etc, then continue the pup’s socialization. The goal is to have all positive experiences in the first 16 weeks of the pup’s life. Meet at least 100 different people, visit different indoor and outdoor locations, different surfaces, sounds, sights, modes of transport, meet other dogs that are properly socialized and friendly (even if the final vaccinations have not yet been done), plus expose the dog to any environments you anticipate s/he will be exposed to during her lifetime. etc After the 16 weeks, it is important to maintain all this but not as intensive.
You can start the basic training (sit, eye contact, leave it, nose targeting etc) as young as when you bring the pup home. But be careful to let your pup be a pup! Your dog is a dog first, family member second, community member third and service dog fourth. If you plan to do other things (like compete in sports), train those later if the service dog is the primary focus.
Plan to not use your dog for diabetic alerts full time until the dog is 2 to 3 years old. That also gives your daughter time to grow up as most children under 8 years of age are not mature enough to interact with a dog safely unsupervised and schools may not embrace having a dog attend with a young child without an adult present. Illegal or not, school administrators can find ways to bar the dog from attending school.
Avoid asking too much of your dog as they can burn out. Working as a service dog for one person is a full-time job for most dogs. Some dogs, like diabetic and seizure alert dogs, are on 24/7 so make sure to give the dog time away from work on a regular basis. Have them go visit a family member or friend who lives in a different house.
The diabetic alert is the easy part to train (takes not many sessions for most dogs to get the hang of it. Generalizing it to other locations is the longer part.) The hardest part of training a service dog is getting the dog’s confidence and overall behavior to a level suitable for public access (if you intend to certify) starting with Canine Good Neighbor or CLASS program by the APDT and continuing with a Public Access test. All service dogs need to be bombproof in many environments, with people, other dogs, other dogs, distractions etc.
Know that no service dog is ready to work in public until after about 18 months of age. If someone is trying to sell you a “trained” service dog that is younger than that, a year old or especially a 12 to 16 week old pup, then run away! Pups of this age do not have the social, emotional or physical maturity or reliability to handle this job, even if they can already detect blood sugar highs and lows. They have not been trained to work in public and cannot handle the distractions when doing so. They have not weathered fear periods or even had enough life experience to do a job well. Plus it’s not fair to the developing pup to put that level of responsibility on him or her. Would you trust your health to a 12 year old child?
You can adopt an adult dog and train it to be a medical detection dog. They do not need to be raised using their nose to learn the task. Dogs know how to use their nose and if they have a bond with you, they can easily learn how to do medical alerts of all kinds. Avoid short-nosed breeds for the job just because they often have health issues due to the short nose structure or heart issues.
Here is a FREE e-book that helps you to select a service dog from various sources.
