Dog Saves The Life Of A Child With Diabetes
Dogs can learn many things. One of the last frontiers is their ability to pinpoint the blood sugar level of people with diabetes. As surprising as it sounds, the tests carried out have given excellent results and one dog has even saved the life of a child.
Jedi is the Labrador to whom Luke, a seven-year-old boy, suffering from type 1 diabetes, owes his life. The boy and his parents were asleep when the dog became alarmed in the middle of the night. He noticed that the machine that monitors Luke’s blood sugar was not working properly.
The dog, sensing that something was wrong, ran to warn the baby’s mother. He jumped onto the woman’s bed and started squirming; this is the signal he was taught in training to indicate any anomalies.
The baby’s mother, Dorrie, immediately took a blood sample from Luke and found that the animal was right. The blood sugar level was much lower than indicated by the device and was dropping rapidly.
Now the dog has become the family hero, deservedly, because it can be said that he saved little Luke’s life. In addition to the sense of smell, dogs have a good capacity for intuition. How did you understand, Jedi, that the child needed help?
Luke’s disease and the ability to detect diabetes
Image source: www.stuff.co.nz
Luke is only 7 years old and suffers from type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that affects approximately 3 million North Americans and millions of people around the world. There is still no cure. Since your baby’s pancreas has stopped producing insulin, your blood sugar may suddenly drop or rise, especially during sleep. Jedi, his guard dog, is trained to smell these small changes in Luke’s blood.
The news quickly went around the world as the baby’s mother, Dorrie, shared her unusual experience on Facebook. When she woke up and saw Jedi on her bed, she quickly realized that something serious had happened. Luke’s monitor was apparently normal, but the dog didn’t stop being agitated.
So Dorrie drew a drop of blood from her son’s finger. The glucose level was 57, very low since normal values range between 75 and 150. Without the help of the faithful Jedi she would not have noticed anything. Luke is connected to a continuous glucose monitoring system, inserted under the skin. At that moment, however, the device did not detect any anomalies.
The benefits of living with a dog
Since humans have lived with dogs, there are many benefits they derive from it, even if we are not always aware of it. Loyalty, faithfulness and unconditional love are characteristics that make them ideal for being trained to save people’s lives.
Training them isn’t cheap, but in many cases it’s worth it. Jedi, for example, is part of a specific assistance dog program for people with diabetes. They are trained to detect low or high blood sugar levels and alert humans with specific signals.
A keen sense of smell makes dogs able to smell, as we already know, drugs and explosive devices. This ability, combined with a strong intuitiveness, allows them to smell and distinguish the imperceptible odor emanating from a person with an insufficient level of insulin. During the training the dog is taught to recognize, through the sense of smell, the variations of the sugar levels and to compare it with the smell of his master.
The breeds most used in these programs are the Labrador and the Golden Retriever, both of which have a very fine sense of smell. In Africa, some dog breeds are trained to detect tuberculosis and other diseases, always through the sense of smell.
There are many reasons to be grateful to dogs, even if we are not always aware of them.
