Mister Memphis here into the yearbook 🤩

[u/Stock_Side_9726]

Girl with celiac disease takes her alert dog to school everyday and he made it into the school yearbook, how wholesome this is really ❤️‍🩹

It heals my heart

[u/dchiculat]

But the dog probably is not for detecting gluten though

[u/Round_Bound_Mound → u/dchiculat]

Dogs can detect low blood sugar, kids aren’t great at knowing their own bodies, they can’t identify they feel like they have low blood sugar like an adult can.

[u/Kindaspia → u/[deleted]]

Dog alerts the kid that blood sugar is high or low, kid goes to nurse, they test her blood sugar and decide there if she needs glucose or insulin, and how much. Pre-food insulin is handled by the nurse, not the dog.

[u/Kindaspia → u/[deleted]]

Most cases that is better, however the dogs can often detect drops earlier than CGMs by about 10 minutes (CGMs are testing interstitial fluids, not blood, so it lags behind a bit). For someone with very fast drops that can matter quite a bit. I generally think service dogs aren’t a great choice for kids, especially that young, but there are cases where it is the better option.

[u/jorjorh5678 → u/[deleted]]

If she has low blood sugar the dog will be telling her she can have sweets XD

[u/cwx149 → u/[deleted]]

Sort of yes

[u/Letho72 → u/[deleted]]

I had a teacher with a service dog for his blood sugar (not sure if it was diabetes or something similar). When his blood sugar would drop, his dog would get super antsy and start bugging him so that he would eat a honey stick or something. I'm not sure if a service dog is cheaper than a glucose monitor, or if there was a reason he couldn't use one. I guess if you already want a dog, getting a service dog can get two birds with one stone.

[u/SpamDirector → u/Letho72]

Dogs pick up on a dropping blood sugar before CGMs do, helping prevent it from getting too serious. Some people also don't feel lows themselves, which is much more dangerous in people who manually test. And they'll alert before you feel symptoms anyway for people who do. You can't use a dog without some form of monitor to actually see what's happening, having the actual numbers is still important. They're basically an advance notice system to prevent things getting worse.

One time, someone's dog alerted on me 15 minutes before my monitor showed anything abnormal happening. There's also lots of videos with similar time frames from other T1s.

[u/wdh662 → u/Letho72]

If you're from anywhere outside the USA a monitor is cheaper than a dog.

[u/SunshineofMyLyfetime → u/[deleted]]

The dog can alert her even before the monitor does.

This is especially helpful for people (especially kids) that have blood sugar that can either spike or drop rapidly before a monitor can detect it.

[u/dchiculat → u/SunshineofMyLyfetime]

New sensors have prediction algorithms that work pretty well to avoid that though. Maybe when the photo was taken they didnt. 

[u/rtetzloff → u/dchiculat]

I don't know how effective, but they're allegedly trainable for detecting gluten:

https://www.celiacservicedogs.com/

This is the first I've heard of it.

[u/anfornum → u/dchiculat]

Gluten-sniffing dogs exist.