Dog trainers: how would you train a dog to do this?

[Laurie4b]

I just read that there are specially trained dogs who can detect by scent the drop in blood sugar even before it registers on a meter.  We have a family member with Type 1 diabetes and our mutt is clearly a scent hound of some type. (Her favorite game is "Find it" where I hide tidbits of food while she is out of the room and she goes to find them. She primarily hunts for them by scent rather than sight.) 

 

Buying a dog is expensive, but we'd have plenty of opportunities to train her to do an action when our family member had low blood sugar.

 

This would be especially helpful at night if it could be done. This wouldn't replace other monitoring, just enhance it.

 

How would you go about doing this? (I don't mean the medical part, but if you wanted to teach a dog to alert on a scent, but could only produce the scent periodically, how would you do it?) Any thoughts?

 

 

[ktgrok]

Hmm...I think you really need to look into how most places do this. My first thought is either vials of low sugar blood, or maybe gauze or clothing item that was rubbed/sweated on by the person in the midst of a low blood sugar episode? But really don't know much about this. 

[Plink]

Look into barn hunt training. I assume that you would start by following a similar procedure, but you would replace the rat scent for low blood sugar scents, and the dog would eventually be searching on your son rather than in physical space like a barn. Make sure the reward is spectacular, and that the training times are always a surprise.

 

I have no idea how you would get those scents in the first place though. Cheek swabs or sweat samples during low sugar incidents maybe?

[muttmomma]

Yes, use cotton balls in the cheek. Get some when sugar is down and freeze them. Use them to train the dog to alert when he smells the low one.

There are some training guides out there.

[Laurie4b]

Look into barn hunt training. I assume that you would start by following a similar procedure, but you would replace the rat scent for low blood sugar scents, and the dog would eventually be searching on your son rather than in physical space like a barn. Make sure the reward is spectacular, and that the training times are always a surprise.

 

I have no idea how you would get those scents in the first place though. Cheek swabs or sweat samples during low sugar incidents maybe?

 

Last night, I was thinking about this and I thought about seeing if she could distinguish between test strips that had been used when blood sugar was low vs. normal. The test strips have a drop of blood on them that would obviously be dried at that point, but that would be an easy way to start.