Documenting the Alert

Senator and I have been working on his scent training for almost a year now.  He's made some real progress.  He catches most of my highs and lows.  He does it quickly and he is learning to distinguish between them by giving separate alerts.  His public access has been suffering somewhat lately.  I've had some health problems related to my immunosuppression.  I haven't been taking him on many walks or outings lately.  I seem to be over the worst now and am hoping to get back where we were with all of his training.

My concern at the moment, is that he seems to have lost his excitement for some of this.  I've tried switching treats and that seems to help.  I'm planning on playing some scent searching games to up his enthusiasm.  He really enjoyed those when he was first learning to recognize the scent, and I think we will do those same lessons again.  But this time we will also practice the correct alert with them.

I've also been looking for some scientific approaches to teaching DADs and there really aren't any.  The one that I mentioned in my last post (ICAN and Lilly) seems to be the only one.  I've decided to start documenting some of my training.  It will be a good way to mark his progress and to see what we need to be working on more.  I'm measuring how long it takes him to alert and whether he offers the correct behavior for the high or low blood sugar.  He should sit for a high and down for a low after the initial alert which is to paw me.

Date                      Time taken to alert                         Alert give for high or low BG
11/25                           10 sec.                                                 Low for High BG
11/25                           25 sec.                                                 Low for High BG
11/26                           20 sec.                                                 High for High BG
11/26                           15 sec.                                                 Low for Low BG
11/26                           25 sec.                                                 High for High BG
11/27                           15 sec.                                                 High for High BG
11/27                           20 sec.                                                  Low for Low BG
11/27                           15 sec.                                                  High for High BG
11/28                           10 sec.                                                   Low for Low BG
11/28                           15 sec.                                                          ?
11/29                           10 sec.                                                   High for High BG
11/29                           10 sec.                                                   High for High BG
11/30                           10 sec.                                                   High for High BG
11/30                           15 sec.                                                    Low for High BG
12/1                             15 sec.                                                   High for High BG
12/2                             2 min.                                                    Low for Log BG  (old sample)
12/2                             15 sec.                                                    High for High BG (live sample)
12/3                             45 sec.                                                    Low for Low BG
12/3                              5 sec.                                                     Low for Low BG (live sample)
12/4                             15 sec.                                                    High for High BG
12/4                             30 sec.                                                    Low for High BG
12/4                             15 sec.                                                    High for High BG
12/5                             15 sec.                                                    Low for High BG
12/5                              5 sec.                                                    High for High BG