Paws for Diabetics

When we first came home as little puppies, Mum was newly diagnosed with diabetes and struggling to get it under control. When the sugar monster gets angry she can get really sick very quickly, and the humans were worried and trying to figure out the best ways of helping her. Our neighbour told Dad that Chinese Crested are particularly known for being excellent and often natural Diabetic Alert Dogs, so even though the humans were a bit sceptical they started doing some research and Dad started tracking our behaviour.

He noticed that I (Ella) would nibble at Mum's fingers and paw at her face sometimes. Jack would sit on Mum's chest and make little whimpering noises and nudge her mouth with his nose. If Mum didn't pay attention to us, we'd run and harass Dad until he followed us back to her. Clever Dad started stabbing Mum's finger (she says he takes far too much pleasure in this!) to check what the sugar monster was doing whenever we did these out-of-character things, and he realised that her Blood Glucose Levels were out of range every time! He started calling us her little Nanny Dogs, because we're so good at bossing her around and making sure that she's ok, often before she even starts to feel the sugar monster roaring around!


Mum said that we were her clever little muppets, and she and Dad started to make a big fuss and give us nom noms whenever we alerted to the sugar monster misbehaving. Now we put our paws on Mum's shoulders periodically and demand that she breathe at us so we can check her breath for any nasty messages the sugar monster is sending. If it's behaving we give a satisfied little snort (let's face it, her breath isn't always peppermint fresh) and go on our way, but if not we tell her by smacking her in the face with our paws or nose! The sugar monster can make humans sleepy and their thinking a bit clouded, so we give her one more chance and bite her hand a few times (no, we don't leave teeth marks, but I will increase the pressure until she responds, Jack just gets progressively more hysterical), if she STILL ignores us we dibber dobber to Dad or whoever else is around.

Mum and Dad tell us that they lucked out in the extreme finding us, since we didn't even need to be trained to alert. In fact, before they figured out what was going on Mum used to tell us to stop annoying her, the nerve! For the people with diabetes who haven't cosmically acquired two pawesome sniffers like us,  there's a wonderful program in Australia called Paws for Diabetics Inc. They are a non-profit that trains Diabetic Alert Dogs, and Mum and Dad think they are totally awesome! Check out some of the lives they've helped to save and/or improve if you get a chance.

Helping Mum head in the right direction - forward!

Smooches and Wags
Ella (with Jack 'helping' over my shoulder)