Dove the Diabetic Alert Dog in Training

Here’s a little video of Dove playing a scent game with the low blood sugar odor. I hide the metal tin somewhere in the room and tell her to “find it” which is her search cue. You can watch her use her nose as she catches onto where the source is. This girl loves using her sniffer!!

Scent discrimination with in-range sample

Here’s another fun scent wheel video for y’all. Tonight I introduced a normal range blood sugar saliva sample to the mix. A non-diabetic’s blood sugars tend to stay in the 80-120 range. Anything below 80 is what I use for my low samples. This time, I added a sample when my blood sugar was 130. The general consensus of a “high” blood sugar for diabetics is anything above 180. For this session, every port has a metal tin with a cotton swab inside of it. One port has the 130 distraction sample and one has the correct 75 low scent. This exercise teaches Dove that it is the actual saliva scent that she’s isolating, not the cotton or the tin. The addition of the in-range blood sugar sample will help her distinguish the range I want her to alert. I make sure to never reward for her “alerting” to the 130 sample, and reward heavily for the 75 sample. In this video, the first port she alerts to is the 130. I simply wait her out and she moves on to find the correct 75 sample. After that, she finds the 75 sample every time. To clarify, I haven’t taught her a specific indication behavior when she finds the scent because I do not want to muddy her nose nudge alerts on my leg. I look for persistence on the scent. 🩸

Another bringsel session

Our third session with the bringsel tab! She’s actively looking for the bringsel now which is lovely. Her hold is nice in general, not too chompy. I will probably name it something other than “get”, but that is what she understands to be the cue to grab something with her mouth, so that’s what we’re using for now. You’ll see that, though I try to give Dove ample breaks to go search for cookies, sometimes she disengages from me still. I let her circle or sniff, whatever it is she wants. I wait to see if she’ll come back and engage again. This time she did, even bringing me the leash tab. Great! When she completely turns her brain off and does not offer to come back, I know I’ve pushed the session too long. I have her do a very simple known behavior, reward for that, and end. Then I have better information for next time as to where her line is!

First bringsel retrieve session

Today, we did something fun and introduced Dove to the bringsel. A bringsel is a leash tab that a dog wears on her collar. She is trained to grab the tab with her mouth and bring it to me as an alert. I am thinking of using the bringsel alert for my high blood sugar alert. I prefer the hard, persistent nose nudge for the low blood sugar alert because a low is more dangerous in the moment. When we eventually train night time alerts, I want her to feel comfortable and confident in waking me by jumping or nudging. High blood sugars are not fun and often make me irritable and tired, but unless it goes extremely high, it is not a danger to me in the moment. This is the first time I ever introduced Dove to this biothane bringsel. She has been working to retrieve a plastic dumbbell and an empty juice bottle, she’s never experienced anything thin like this. What a smart, confident girl she is!

Mixing formal retrieve with verbal cue practice.

Here’s a very candid excerpt of our nearly ten minute training session. I have been working on Dove’s formal retrieve with both a dumbbell and, recently, an empty apple juice bottle. She is doing well and is slowly getting better at holding the item without chomping. I use a feeding bowl upside down just as a visual marker for Dove so she doesn’t have to worry about getting the bottle AND where she puts her feet or body. I use my own verbal motivation to encourage her when I see her going down the right path. At some points, you may see her stray from what I want or offer other known behaviors. I stay quiet until she gets back on track, then I come in with happy words. The jump stand and Klimb are there to break up the retrieve session and to work on some agility basics. Normally we work these with body cues from me, but tonight I asked her to do them on her own—hence her slight confusion sometimes. If I see her struggling too much I step in with a physical cue. Training sessions usually aren’t very pretty, and here’s some proof of that. I hope that I take my mistakes and build on them for future sessions!

Working through some frustration

Here’s a scent training video! To be honest, I haven’t been drilling scentwork as much as I probably should. But we are working through some adolescent puppy things, like some leash reactivity with other dogs and just general dog distraction (how dare I not let her interact with every dog!!). The things I thought she had down, especially recall, need practice, but I also need to keep it fun to ensure she’s engaged. With all that behavior stuff, I’ve just kept my head down and tried to wade through the “teenage” phase. Dove is 10 months old today and we are certainly in the pits of adolescence, but I can see glimmers of the dog she will become! Today I introduced having multiple saliva samples in the scent wheel—previously, the other ports were empty besides the low sample. I’ve introduced another saliva sample with an in-range or normal blood sugar level. I haven’t introduced this smell to her so you can see her confusion when she scents something that is similar but not quite what I want her to alert to. We work through that in this session. I wait her out, but I probably could have stepped in to help her succeed a little more in the beginning. Hind sight! I’ll do better next time. I propped the scent wheel on our Klimb board to discourage her from trampling all over it! 😆 I haven’t taught Dove a certain alert behavior for the scent wheel, so I’m just capturing what she’s giving as long as she’s persistent on the correct scent. I may add a behavior later, but I don’t want to muddy her nose nudge alert. We’ll see!