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.