Discriminating the low scent

After spending many sessions having him smell the low scent that I had put onto the cotton ball, I decided to go to the next step to see if he could distinguish its smell from another that I created.

I made the second smell by making a cotton ball with a normal glucose scent on it.  I didn't check to see exactly what it was, but it was not low.  Fortunately, I can now feel the lows. :)

Mr. I'm not allowed on the couch!

I started as before, having Senator smell the low in a pill container and clicking and treating him as he did this several times.  Then, I introduced a second pill container with the normal scent cotton ball.  I'd like to say that he went right for the low scent, but it was about 50/50.  He did learn that he only got a treat for smelling the correct container eventually.  I did this several time in a row and then moved both containers to another location.  At times he would get stymied and just stare at the containers.  I tried prompting him by saying "find the low".  Sometimes this helped get him going again.  If it didn't, I removed the decoy and we practiced with rewards for smelling the low scent container again for awhile.

I have been doing this for two days now, and will continue with this for awhile.  At least until I am convinced that he can discriminate the smell, or until I think he doesn't understand or can't discriminate.  Then, I would go back to just having him sniff it for a reward for awhile again.

I've been waiting for a vest that I had ordered to get here to take him on outings.  It finally came on Thursday, so on Friday, I took him to our small and deserted mall.  Its perfect for him because I can control when he comes into contact with other people.  We can walk in the mall for awhile until he feels acclimated, and then I take him into a few of the stores.  There is a sporting goods store that we like and that is where we spend most of the time.  Yesterday, as we turned a corner int this store, he started to bark.  There was a picture of a duck on the wall and I'm pretty sure thats what was bothering him.  So after a quick retreat, I started getting him back closer to it.  He would look at it and growl sometimes, but eventually I got him next to it and calm.

I can tell that its been awhile since our last outing.  It took longer to get him acclimated and he wasn't paying quite as close attention to me as he had been.  We will be doing many outings in the near future.

Learning alert behaviors

I decided to use a nudging behavior as an alert signal.  I thought it would be useful because it is something that would be more obvious than a nose push.  After a few attempts of trying to get him to touch me with his paw, I realized that I didn't know how to train this. So, I decided to try to get him to shake, thinking that this would be something that he would use his paw for.  None of the other things I trained had included using paws before.  He picked up on it quickly.

I asked my friend Margaret who is a trainer at the ADAI about this.  She suggested using a coffee can lid as a target for Senator to paw.  I tried this and it has really helped.  I started with the foil insert of the lid because it would be easier to hold against my skin when he was ready for that.  At first, I put it on the floor and rewarded him for touching it.  After a few minutes he got the hang of it.  The next day, I put the foil insert against my leg and said "touch" to get him to paw me.  Again, he caught onto this quickly.  The next day, I eliminated the foil insert and just said touch.  He pawed my leg.  I repeated this many times.  Then, I started to switch positions.  I had been sitting indian style on the floor for most of these sessions.  I tried kneeling and then putting my back to him.  He did well with this.  When I stood up, he was either distracted or confused, because he couldn't make this adjustment.

After a few more days of repetition, he can now paw me standing.  Its really cute because he seem so awkward doing this.  Lifting his paw must not be a natural response for him.

Now I'm realizing that I'll have to be careful about not let him paw me for any other reason.  Just recently, he has pawed me a few times as I was putting on my shoes to take him outside.

The Beginning

Senator and I are beginning a project together.  I am going to see if I can train him to become a Diabetic Alert Dog, DAD.

I obtained Senator from the Assistance Dogs of America, Inc. where I am a volunteer foster.  I had him for about three months and was working on the various commands and behaviors necessary to become a service dog.  He was doing well and I was really enjoying both the training and having such a nice dog.  Then, when he reached one year of age, he was given an evaluation by the program trainers.  He did well with his learned behaviors, but failed the xray part of the evaluation.  He was diagnosed with hip dysplasia.  It was a shock for me.  I knew it was a possibility because it is a problem with Golden Retrievers, but it was still unhappy news.

In the meantime, I had become interested in Diabetic Alert dogs.  I had begun reading all that I could find on how to train them.  My goal was to spend the winter reading and learning, and then ask the ADAI if I might try out my knowledge on a dog who was a flunky from their program.  Little did I know that I already had that Flunky!

So, I decided to keep him and just get an early start.  Most of what I had been reading is from the site diabeticalertdog.com.  There are videos and posts of various dog/trainer teams of the techniques that they are using. It's been very helpful.


I began the training recently and decided to document it all here as a good place to keep things organized.

As of now, my strategy is to train him to
1. Recognize the scent of low blood sugar.
2. Alert me that he has recognized the scent.

3. Find the scent hidden on my body and alert to it.

4. Recognize the low scent generated by my body when my blood sugar is low.

5. Move on to high blood sugars and do the same thing.


I collect the scent by catching my blood sugar at about 70-75 and soaking a cottonball in my mouth.  This sample can be frozen and saved for awhile.  They are good for about 3 days after thawing.

Here is the link to a video that I watched before starting this.

I collected my first sample when I was at 72.  I froze it in a test strip container until I was ready to begin.

I tried the scent work for the first time on 12/30/11.  I thawed out the cotton ball and put it into different containers and had him sniff it.  I clicked and treated for each sniff.  He seemed to catch on to what he was being rewarded for, but I can only hope that it wasn't just the sniffing, but the smelling that he was associating with the treat.  I'm going to continue as if its the smelling for awhile, and then try to use more than one scent to make him distinguish scent from sniff.

I use a glass, a bowl, a baggie and an envelope to vary the container.  I learned on the second try to be quick with the bowl sniff.  He ate the cotton ball!

I tried it again the next day(12/31) with a fresh cotton ball.  I found myself at 76 and made a new sample.  This session went very similar to the first.  I was more conscious of having his nose farther into the baggie, glass, or envelope to be sure he was having a good chance to smell the scent.

On 1/2/12, we had our third session.  I used the second cottonball from the 76 bg sample.  He seemed enthusiastic about doing this training.  I did the scent training for awhile and then we worked on his basic commands afterwards.

I have been repeating this basic process for several days now.  I am trying not to get into too much of a routine, but its hard to vary this much.  I'm worried that he is just going through the motions and not really learning about what he is smelling.  I still think its good to have him associate smell and reward  as many times as I can.  At some point, I'll have him make a choice between smells to see if he can pick out the low scent.