Dogs sniff out blood-sugar changes in diabetics

Nearly every day, Sarah Schaff’s dog, Nola, gives her a firm nose-bump on the leg.

The 24-year-old, who has Type 1 diabetes, takes these canine nudges very seriously. Schaff has trained her 2-year-old golden retriever to alert her whenever subtle changes in the scent of her breath indicate the concentration of glucose in her blood is moving out of a healthy range.

After being prodded by Nola, Schaff checks her glucose and has a snack if her levels are slipping or a correction dose of insulin if her numbers are on the rise.

“Nola recognizes what’s going on. She keeps me right where I need to be,” said Schaff, who rewards Nola with a treat after every alert. “My target range is between 80 and 180, but sometimes she’ll bump me at 102. She catches (my falling blood-glucose levels) early, even before the meter’s monitor picks up on it.”

Dogs trained for service

Nola is one of a growing cadre of canines being trained as “service dogs” – those that are paired with mentally or physically challenged individuals to improve their quality of life.

“We’re just finding out what dogs can do for people with epilepsy, diabetes, narcolepsy and other diseases that are invisible, in addition the more visible impairments, such as being blind or in a wheelchair,” said Schaff, a St. Angela Merici parishioner and Ursuline Academy alumna who launched her Metairie-based company, From Pets to Partners, last fall.

In addition to walking and in-home pet-sitting, Schaff offers the full spectrum of dog training, from basic obedience skills to teaching owners how to shape canine behavior to carry out more complex service-dog tasks.

Schaff said researchers in the relatively young science still are mystified about the scent cues dogs pick up on as they interact with their diabetic owners.

Early alerts critical to health

“When a person’s glucose is running higher, sometimes they’ll produce ketones, which are toxins, that make the breath sweet,” Schaff said, noting that chronic hyperglycemia can impact the blood vessels and cause a well-known set of complications over time, including neuropathy, poor circulation leading to limb amputation, and eye and kidney problems.

Diabetics prone to hypoglycemia – a low concentration of glucose in the blood – can suffer seizures if their disease is poorly managed. Their brains lose function due to diminishing fuel.

“Lows are more immediately serious because the levels can fall out very quickly,” Schaff notes. “Because the brain uses glucose primarily for energy, it is the first thing that is affected. A low blood-glucose number means the brain is losing energy.”

In addition to alerting Schaff about the fluctuating chemistry of her blood, Nola is being trained by her owner to fetch juice from the refrigerator and to retrieve Schaff’s glucose monitor and sugar tablets from her purse.

Diabetic service dogs can be especially helpful in alerting diabetic children, who may lack the maturity to recognize physiological changes that an adult can detect, such as “I’m feeling shaky,” Schaff said. They also offer all-important early alerts to those who can no longer “feel” their blood-sugar dropping – and to diabetics as they sleep, when they are least aware of the spikes and dives of their blood-glucose levels.

“(Service dogs) have really given people their lives back – that control, that ability to know what’s going on in their bodies even if they don’t feel it, even before it happens,” Schaff said, citing the story of a diabetic woman prone to nighttime glucose crashes who saw her annual trips to the ER go from 20 to zero after acquiring a service dog.

An unexpected career path

Schaff, a member of St. Angela’s young adult ministry, originally thought she would become a veterinarian or a zookeeper as she attended LSU in pursuit of her degree in animal science and technology. During her junior year, she saw a magazine article about a new branch of assistance dogs that alerted diabetics when they went outof range – especially the lows to which Schaff was prone.

“That just piqued my interest,” said Schaff, who went on to learn how to train service dogs through a pair of internships, the first with a Columbia, S.C., organization whose specialty was training dogs to assist people with mobility challenges.

“(The service dogs) act as arms and legs – they can work with people in wheelchairs to retrieve things and also with people who have limited dexterity, who are constantly dropping things,” Schaff said. “Dogs can be taught to push the handicap buttons on automatic doors with their nose or paws. They can turn switch plate lights on and off.”

Larger dogs can be humanely harnessed to pull wheelchairs and used as “stability dogs,” in lieu of traditional canes, by those with balance issues, she added.

In South Carolina, Schaff also learned how “psychiatric dogs” could be trained to soothe veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder by lying across their owners’ bodies in advance of a panic attack – a response possibly triggered by the dogs’ detection of their owners’ changing cortisol levels. Canine contact also is being used as a substitute for the weighted vests some autistic children wear to offset their sensations of “floating” and losses of focus.

“The dogs kind of bring them out of that over-stimulated state,” Schaff said.

An internship in Carrboro, N.C., immersed Schaff in the training of diabetic alert dogs. Trainers use saliva samples from diabetics in various stages of reaction to teach the dogs when to raise an alarm.

“It’s kind of like search-and-rescue and drug-dog training,” Schaff explained. “You make this smell something really special and something really to be interested in (by the dog), and then you put in an alert behavior, such as a bump or sending the dog to get help.”

Schaff, who recently earned her “certified training partner” status from the Karen Pryor Academy for Animal Training and Behavior, said the best service-dog candidates are golden retrievers like Nola, Labrador retrievers, poodles and mixtures of these breeds. Her current workload includes training a goldendoodle to alert a 12-year-old diabetic; and teaching a border collie mix to alert the parents of a young girl, prone to sudden bouts of low blood pressure, to give her water to stave off a fainting spell.

Making a serious difference

Humans are just beginning to tap into the possibilities of canine technology, she said.

“We didn’t know about dogs and diabetes 20 years ago, so who knows what we’ll find out 20 years from now,” Schaff said. “Dogs in the UK are being trained for bio- and medical-detection work. They’re detecting cancer, sniffing out bedbugs. Dogs are being used to alert before epileptic seizure episodes, before Addison’s crisis episodes, before narcoleptic episodes.”

Schaff said the most satisfying part of her job is helping people with disabilities because of their great appreciation for the “small things that they do have.”

“People with disabilities are able to handle things so gracefully and they have a beautiful outlook on life,” she said. “I have always found it rewarding to help others, and I feel extremely blessed that I’ve not had problems with anything genetics has handed me.”

Beth Donze can be reached at [email protected]