Diabetic Alert Dog Will Help Young Girl With Challenges of Living With Type 1 Diabetes in Clarksville, Tennessee

Haley, a 10-year-old Type 1 Diabetic residing in Clarksville, Tennessee, received a very special placement of her own Diabetic Alert Dog from Service Dogs By Warren Retrievers this week. Based out of Madison, Virginia, Service Dogs By Warren Retrievers, or more commonly known as “SDWR,” places custom trained and bred service dogs for individuals with invisible disabilities like Diabetes, Autism, PTSD, and Seizure Disorders. With nearly 1,000 families actively enrolled or waiting for their service dog placement, SDWR has a mission to bring each a life-saving service dog. Haley’s new service dog, Mavis, will be expected to perform necessary tasks to assist her diabetes diagnosis.

Mavis, a Labrador Retriever Diabetic Alert Dog, recently graduated from the SDWR Service Dog Raiser program. During his training, Mavis received several thousand hours of training with both volunteers and professional trainers to equip him for working service dog life. With the assistance of a certified SDWR trainer, Mavis will continue to develop his skills to serve Haley with actions like alerting to high and low blood sugar, dialing 911 on a special device during emergencies, and increasing her independence.

Haley was diagnosed at age eight with Type 1 Diabetes, which means her pancreas no longer produces insulin and she is completely dependent on her insulin pump. Haley’s mother, Cara, has concerns that her continuous glucose monitoring device (CGM) tells Haley when her blood sugar levels are off, but does not react as efficiently as a service dog’s nose. Cara explains that, “As it pertains as to why we wanted a service dog, it is because Haley doesn’t feel her highs or lows and her CGM is often behind the curve on telling us when she is low. Also, it has a deviation between the CGM and meter and is enough to be concerning.” Haley will also be at the age soon where she can be left home alone and having a service dog there to alert her means they no longer have the fear of her passing out or having an episode with no one around.

SDWR uses a proprietary scent training method to teach Diabetic Service Dogs to detect fluctuations in blood sugar that fall outside of a handler’s healthy range. Since Mavis is a service dog and covered under laws in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, he will be able to accompany Haley everywhere including school and her favorite activities such as hiking, golfing, playing outside, body surfing, etc.

SDWR will return to Haley’s home 3-4 times over the course of the next 18 months to continue working on Mavis’s customized training and public access certification. This certification can only be given to Mavis’s handler, Haley, after a progression of hard work and dedication to the SDWR training program.

SDWR has been utilizing the placement and return training method for nearly a decade and received positive results with families worldwide. The organization strives to place dogs with families based on their unique personalities to facilitate a strong bond and positivity-based training method. SDWR sends trainers to their homes on a set schedule and requires no travel by handlers to custom-train a service dog. This ensures the dogs learn all the custom commands in the environment in which they will be expected to work.

Service Dogs by Warren Retrievers is a nonprofit organization based in Madison, Virginia, and relies on donations to help the organization in its mission, “Until there’s a cure … there’s a dog.”

To make or donation or learn more about SDWR, please visit the website, http://www.sdwr.org.

To learn more about Diabetic Alert Dogs visit http://sdwr.org/service-dogs/diabetic-alert.

To find out how you can volunteer as a puppy raiser, visit http://www.sdwr.org/volunteer-opportunities.

Additional Links:
​http://www.sdwr.org/faq
​http://www.sdwr.org/service-dog-raiser-program
http://www.sdwr.org/service-dogs