Jo’s Cafe

Can dogs sense when a diabetic is having a low?  Well I can’t see why not — everyone knows that a dog can pick up smells you and I thought we’d covered up.  Just try and keep a dog from licking at something you’ve thought you cleaned up.  I’ve seen our two go after a spot on the floor I knew I’d cleaned up.  Yeah right - so much for my cleaning skills. But God built these wonderful angels with a huge smell-meter.

The Dog Owner’s Guide quotes from L. Wilson Davis’ book Go Find! Training Your Dog to Track:

“If a skunk sprays your rose bush, you will be unable to smell the roses. If the assumption that the dog’s sense of smell is simply keener than ours is correct, certainly the odor of skunk would obliterate any other odor even more for him than it does for you. This is not true. Tests have been made with skunk odor and it has been proven that a dog trained in scent work is capable of correctly designating a particular article among a number of articles, all of which have been sprayed by a skunk.”

… and adds:

The source of this incredible ability is a nasal cavity rich with blood vessels and nerve endings that connect to a highly developed olfactory center in the brain. This combination allows Fido to gather information from minute particles of scent and to translate it into action.

Stands to reason then a dog can sniff out when a person is having a diabetic low. 

Diabetes Health has an article about Zip, a poodle who saved her owners’ life.

The day before it happened, Karen held a family party and had a busy day full of swimming and eating shrimp. That night, her husband Peter took a Benadryl for a horsefly bite, and the couple went to sleep with Zip, as always, between them on the bed.  At about 1:30 a.m., Peter was awakened from his heavy slumber by the persistent whimpering of Zip, who was pawing at his face. Once Peter was awake, Zip immediately rushed to Karen and started whining.  When Peter reached over to touch her, he found she was sweating profusely, cold, and pale, and he couldn’t wake her up. By the time the ambulance arrived, Karen’s blood sugar was 31 mg/dl. Zip stayed right by Karen’s left shoulder and wouldn’t budge throughout the entire incident.

Since that time, Zip has alerted Karen to low blood sugars three more times when she’s been asleep.  Each time, her blood glucose has been about 50 mg/dl.  Twice he’s alerted her when she was awake, and she’s had blood sugar of around 47.

Queens University in Northern Ireland is wanting to study the ability of dogs to read glucose lows in humans.

Queen’s University researchers are appealing for volunteers to help investigate whether dogs can reliably detect changes in their owner’s diabetic state.

Dr Deborah Wells from the School of Psychology at Queen’s and Dr Shaun Lawson from the University of Lincoln are appealing for 100 Type One diabetics to complete an online survey. The researchers are also seeking video footage of dogs reacting to their owner’s ‘hypos’ or low blood sugar levels.

Dr Wells said: “Anecdotal reports suggest that some dogs can perform early warning of hypoglycaemia by using their sense of smell to ’sniff out’ if their owner’s blood sugar levels are dropping.

Anecdotal or not, Zip has already proven to one family that a dogs’ nose knows.