Dog can sniff out owner's diabetes trouble

Dog can sniff out owner's diabetes trouble
Assistance Dogs of the West trains canines to detect blood sugar crises

By Ben Swan | The New Mexican

5/16/2010

Photo by: Ben Swan/The New Mexican
Like many people, George Coleman would love to ignore the fact that he has a debilitating illness. But diabetes isn't the kind of disease that one can wish away.

Coleman still cringes when he remembers the time more than a decade ago when the vehicle he was driving plowed into a car full of children. That's what happens when you suffer from diabetes: Falling blood glucose can shut off your brain.

"It's sort of like running out of gas," the former Sandia National Laboratories worker said. "What happens is you're going lower and lower, and you start to reason less. It's more than fuzzy thinking; your brain just doesn't register."

Luckily, no one was injured in the Albuquerque accident. But that "heartbreaker" still haunts him, and he wasn't surprised when, years later, he still could not get his Type 1 diabetes under control and his endocrinologist threatened to have his driver's license pulled.

The specialist's solution? Get a dog. More specifically, a diabetes alert dog.

Coleman and his dog, CareBear, will be among the happy graduates Tuesday evening with Assistance Dogs of the West. The 6 p.m. event, which will also include a short video and demonstration on diabetes alert dogs, takes place at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center.

Coleman's participation in ADW's training program has been serendipitous, said Carolyn Clark Beedle, the nonprofit's executive director. While the group has long worked in training dogs to detect seizures, training them to alert on rising or falling blood glucose is a relatively new skill.

"The trainers were fascinated with it," Beedle said. "We were already interviewing people with diabetes and considering a pilot program when George walked in the door."

Dogs, with incredible olfactory receptors — some 220 million compared to a human's measly 50 million — are uniquely suited for scent training. Used for decades in drug and human-cadaver detection, researchers are slowly discovering that canines can be trained to sniff out all kinds of medical and environmental issues, like certain types of cancer in people and harmful molds in homes.

"Dogs are smelling all the time," Beedle said, "so why not use that?"

While it's not fully understood how dogs can detect blood sugar changes, it is known that dogs can detect breath and skin scents that the diabetic gives off.

That means dogs can be trained to alert owners before blood sugars drop or rise to dangerous levels. That can be a life-saving ability for diabetics like Coleman, who doesn't feel the symptoms when his blood sugar drops.

Diabetes, a lifelong illness with no cure, is caused by too little insulin or resistance to insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas to control blood sugar. Type 1 diabetes, usually diagnosed in childhood, requires daily injections of insulin.

The more common Type 2 diabetes usually occurs in adulthood, and is often caused by obesity and failure to exercise. There are several medications available to lower blood glucose in Type 2 diabetes, but often exercise and diet can help.

Low blood glucose can quickly lead to blurred vision, mental impairment, coma and even death. Testing for low or high blood sugar is an important part of monitoring the disease.

For Coleman, his dog has been the persistent reminder to take care of his body, especially at night.

"I never knew I was having highs and lows in the middle of the night," Coleman said. "And my doctor said, 'Well, why don't you set you're alarm clock?' But I knew I wouldn't do it. But when this dog comes in and paws you in the face, what are you going to do?"

Coleman has never been a dog person. He's the kind of guy who can't stand the thought of picking up after a dog and even had a no-pet policy at an apartment complex he owned.

But that changed when CareBear came into his life. Adopted at the urging of friends from an Albuquerque animal shelter, the Labrador retriever has become Coleman's constant companion. Coleman changed the dog's name from Bear to CareBear when he realized just how much the dog was helping him deal with his illness.

Finding the right group to help make CareBear a better diabetes alert dog was no easy task, Coleman said. Many groups that train for specialized skills charge up to $30,000. But ADW's flat fee of $3,500 for service dogs, plus a willingness to work with him, made the group the perfect fit, he said.

ADW, founded by Jill Felice in 1995, trains and provides assistance dogs for people of various disabilities to help build independence and confidence. The dogs, mostly Labrador retrievers, learn at least 90 commands to help their owners.

The $3,500 doesn't even come close to covering the cost of training the dogs, Beedle said, but fits in with the group's philosophy of being client-oriented. Even so, 95 percent of the clients struggle to pay the fee, which covers two weeks of client-training, pre-placement interviews and follow-up work.

Coleman, who entered the program last year, first tackled the public-access portion of the training. That's where dogs must pass 15 behaviors or skills to prove they can mingle with the public.

He's been working with trainers to fine-tune CareBear's detection abilities, plus any behavior issues that come up. As a first-time dog owner, Coleman admitted he was clueless about proper canine nutrition.

CareBear has also been learning to alert Coleman about changes in his blood-sugar level while he's driving a vehicle. The movement of the vehicle makes the dog uneasy, so Coleman has worked on building a bell in the vehicle that the dog can ring when he detects changes.

Scent training for diabetes is a fabulous application for service dogs, said Sue Barns, a longtime ADW trainer who has a background in training search and rescue dogs. She's working on the group's training curriculum.

"Diabetic alert dogs can do for diabetics something that no other person, no monitor, no meter, no piece of equipment can do," she said. "They can actually anticipate when a person's blood sugar is changing when they are still normal. That means they can treat themselves and potentially never go high, or never go low, and keep them in the range they're supposed to be where they're not frying their brain cells or killing their kidneys. There's nothing that can do that but a dog."

All ADW staff trainers work on additional scent training about two hours a week, Beedle said. The group also held a workshop earlier this year with a nationally known trainer. Penny Ryan, a sheriff's deputy and ADW volunteer, has also introduced trainers to U.S. Border Patrol dog trainers.

The two groups will share expertise, Beedle said, with ADW offering help with clicker training, a specialized training technique, and Border Patrol officers sharing their scent training techniques.

While all dogs can likely detect diabetes scent changes, not all dogs are suitable for the work, Barns noted. That's why the group spends a lot of time matching the right service dog with the right person.

CareBear turned out to be a natural for detecting the changes, Coleman said.

"He's really brought my life balance," Coleman said. "We have the one of the highest incidences of diabetes in New Mexico. People could really use these dogs."

Contact Ben Swan at 986-3051 or bswan@sfnewmexican.com.

Assistance dog information

For more information about ADW, visit the group's website at www.assistancedogsofthewest.org or call 986-9748. Tickets to attend Tuesday's ceremony are $10 and available at the Lensic box office, 988-1234.

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