Schnauzer Sam sounds the alarm

Schnauzer Sam sounds the alarm

By KIM THOMAS - The Press Last updated 05:00 29/05/09

A Christchurch dog has been trained to provide essential medical help to its owner.

Pip Farrant, the owner of Sam the miniature schnauzer, has kidney failure and needs at least nine hours of dialysis a day.

To allow her to continue her job as a needs assessor at Princess Margaret Hospital, Farrant gets her dialysis while she sleeps.

But she is profoundly deaf and cannot hear the alarm that goes off when she rolls over in bed and crushes a tube in the dialysis process.

Farrant and her dialysis nurse, Lesley Harsburgh, decided to train one-year-old Sam to jump on to the bed and wake his owner when the alarm sounded.

"Sam is a pretty smart little dog," Harsburgh said.

"It took us only a couple of hours to train him with treats to run into Pip's room when the alarm goes off. He's got a bit fatter since then, but he's about 99 per cent accurate."

Harsburgh said vibrating alarms were available to alert people to the dialysis machine halting, but she had been unable to get one.

Farrant has needed at least nine hours of dialysis a day since early this year and faced having to quit her job until the pair hit on the idea of training Sam.

"It means I can lead a normal life and get out and about instead of being tied to the dialysis machine. I couldn't work otherwise," Farrant said.