When I attended a type 1 meet-up in Minneapolis last month, two ladies had large poodles who were very well trained. One of the ladies is a TuD member. The other is a friend on Facebook. my Facebook friend says her poodle warns her as soon as she is 65 or so, and dropping. She rarely ever has lows anymore.
H Terry4. I followed your advice and did a search for Diabetic Alert Dogs, and I came across this post by you! I didn’t realize that you were on the board for one such non-profit agency. How do I apply??!!?
@Linda_Cohan, I was on the board of EAC when this thread was active in 2011. I am no longer on the board but I do actively support their mission. EAC limits its applicants to west coast states. Get the most current info directly from them via email at info@ealyalertcanines.org. Check out their website at www.earlyalertcanines.org.
We have a puppy, Dottie, who has had no training as a DAD. She alerts me and my daughter when she has lows under 60 and highs over 300. Too bad we are failing at training her to poop outside…
Does anyone know how I might go about getting Dottie certified as a DAD? (Because I’d like my daughter to be able to take her when she goes away to college so I don’t have to keep cleaning dog poop off the carpeting.) 
What you want to do is qualify Dottie as a “service dog.” In the US, a service dog is a legal term defined within Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). A dog can become a service dog when it meets a few requirements. First of all, the service-dog handler must have a disability as defined under the Act. Endocrine disorders (diabetes) are listed in the Act as a disability. Second, the dog must be trained to provide a specific service that mitigates the handler’s disability. Blood glucose alert, both low and high meets this requirement.
The ADA does not require that the dog be professionally trained. It allows for owner-trained dogs to become service dogs. Having said that, there are a lot of self-trained dogs that fail to meet the standard for service dogs. Most of these failures fall under the ability to calmly and appropriately cohabit human environments where canines are not normally present. A doctor’s office waiting room is a good example.
A true service-dog can provide its disability-mitigating task in any environment that his/her handler occupies. That includes work, school, doctor’s office, dentist office, grocery store, restaurant, bus, train, or airplane to name a few. The law grants the team access to any place of public accommodation. A dog that barks, sniffs others inappropriately, runs around, or otherwise causes unnecessary commotion loses access rights under the ADA.
So, to self-train a dog to service dog level, I would recommend that you work out a formal training method to hone Dottie’s scent work. My training, for instance, consisted to two weeks of team-training followed by six months of weekly reporting via a spreadsheet of every alert the dog gives, whether correct or incorrect, as well as the context for that alert. The goal is to get the dog to reliably alert in a wide variety of settings. There is no correct alert percentage number spelled out in the law but 80% is a reasonable goal.
The second piece of service dog work is the public access component. In a professional program the dog is exposed to a wide variety of human environments so that they are socialized to them. Walking through a grocery store without sniffing the food on the shelves is one of the basic skills. Many of the “make-believe” service dogs I meet will bark or growl at my dog when shopping at Costco. Simply buying a service dog vest over the internet does not make a service dog. The title of service dog must be continually earned by action each day. (Dottie would be disqualified if she cannot curb her inappropriate relieving tendency.)
I summary, “service dog” is a legal term defined under the ADA. The handler must have a disability as defined under the Act. (Diabetes qualifies and the ADA list of disabilities is deliberately left open-ended and non-listed disabilities may qualify.) Service dogs may be self-trained. Service dogs must provide a specific disability-mitigating action (hypo- and hyper-glycemia alert qualify). Service dogs must calmly and obediently accompany their handler in a wide variety of places of public accommodation.
Finally. a good service dog is very patient at “settling.” The dog must often spend hours calmly waiting for his/her handler as s/he goes though their tasks at school and work.
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What a handsome animal. Having a dog for a roommate is the best! They will give you only loyalty and love. Your dog is a big boy…I bet he keeps you busy and helps you get a lot of exercise.
Thank-you for your comment Julia. Norm does make my life better. At 58 pounds, he’s more in the medium-sized dog category. He’s about as big a dog as I’d like when traveling on an airplane. He occupies my foot-space in this situation. Norm and I average about 3-4 miles of walking every day. He does help keep me motivated to walk; he needs to go out anyway and getting out the door is often the hardest part.
[quote]Does anyone know how I might go about getting Dottie certified as a DAD?
(Because I’d like my daughter to be able to take her when she goes away
to college so I don’t have to keep cleaning dog poop off the carpeting.)[/quote]
One thing I would say (in general to everyone) is please do not get a dog certified as a service dog just because you want to take them everywhere! Having a service dog is a lot of work—even more work than a pet. People certifying “service dogs” to do a task just because they want to take (essentially) a pet everywhere is part of the reason there is a huge problem with fake service dogs running around, which creates access barriers for those who truly need dogs and put in the time and effort to train a dog and maintain the dog’s training. I’m not saying that you were necessarily intending to do this if your comment was meant to be humourous, but one dog pooping on the mall floor or snatching food off a restaurant table can create major issues for the next person with a service dog who comes along. There are laws granting service dogs access to all public places, but believe me, people with service dogs get denied access on a regular basis. If a dog is not well trained (and some dogs are simply not cut out to be service dogs), then they should not be certified as one just so they can go into public places. When I was in training with my guide dog years ago, one of the dogs assigned to a studnet in my class didn’t make the cut because he kept relieving himself indoors; that is just not an acceptable behaviour from a service dog (nor is barking or growling or whining in public places, eating food off tables or the floor, constantly tryng to greet and socialize with people, and so on). If you are serious about wanting a service dog, know that while there can be a lot of rewards to having one, there is also a lot of daily work and responsibility that goes in to owning one.