Dove the Diabetic Alert Dog in Training

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Dove the Diabetic Alert Dog in Training

Dove is a Berger Blanc Suisse puppy training to be a diabetic alert dog. Follow her progress here and learn alongside us!

15/08/2022

Good low, Dove!

We’ve been a bit absent on this page, and it has reflected the step back we’ve taken in our blood sugar training. Not to worry—we definitely still put in the work! But I also recognize that Dove, at now 16 months, is very much a teenager and I want to give her the appropriate space to get through this phase.

We are working mostly on maintaining the expectations set as a baby—loose leash walking and engagement around distractions (mainly other dogs). But I do make sure to sprinkle in low blood sugar training in short, successful sessions.

And because she likes to show off, Dove has learned that any number over 230 smells different than normal and has started alerting to that, without any training on that scent. I’m planning on pairing high blood sugars with a different alert than her nose nudge for lows, but I’m excited that she is using her brain so well! I’ll be sure to take videos of teaching her to grab a leash tab and bring it to me when my sugar is high.

Here are photos from tonight, when she alerted me at the perfect number—80. That number is the cutoff for normal ranges and anything below it I consider low. For all she can frustrate me with teenage antics, she pleasantly surprises me just the same. It’s also a selfish relief to me, knowing that I must be doing a few things right. Luckily, she’s forgiving of my other mistakes.

So—take a breath, trust your training, and give your angsty adolescent dog the space to be exceptionally dumb and incredible intelligent all at once.

31/03/2022

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!!

29/03/2022

A little bit of a longer video, but check out what we’ve been working on!

Dove and I have been playing some scent games recently with the low blood sugar odor. One of these games is hiding the scent tin in various places both indoors and out. Here, I hid the odor source in an open area and had her “find it”. There were dogs, kids, and baseball players around and she did SO well ignoring them in favor of the search.

This was not a perfect run, but it gave me so much confidence that Dove likes these games and finds joy and enrichment in the hunt. I adore how her entire body snaps toward the odor at the end there.

Be sure to slow down and enjoy the game with your dog!

03/03/2022

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. 🩸

25/02/2022

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!

19/02/2022

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!

14/02/2022

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!

13/02/2022

Practicing our down-stay… with friends!

Down-stays are more difficult for some dogs over others, and Dove is one of those pups! We practice in different scenarios, but one that I like is having her on her bed while I eat dinner. She tends to squirm and whine when she’s bored, so I try to time my reinforcement when she is quiet and still.

Dogs are a pretty big distraction for her, so having her practice a long duration down-stay next to one was hard. She finally settled in and relaxed after about 40 minutes. They had a play session before, so she had to reset her mind from that. She did very well!! Both dogs are still babies at 10 and 9 months respectively, so we take what they are willing to give us and don’t push them too hard beyond their limits.

19/01/2022

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!

13/01/2022

I got a glimpse of what parents feel like when their toddlers won’t cooperate with their expensive, professional photo shoot. Here, Dove parades around a large stick she managed to find while I call her name from a distance.

Sometimes, especially in the adolescent phase, dogs seem to “regress” or do things that make you exclaim, “but you knew this last month!”. Their minds and bodies are constantly developing while they learn your expectations and prod at boundaries. You gotta just laugh through it. It’s a hard phase of development. However, watching her distraction levels increase helps me realize when I’ve pushed her too far, whether it be the environment I’m asking her to deal with or the task I’m asking her to do. She may look like an adult dog, but she’s still a big baby and I have to remind myself daily to treat her as such.

30/12/2021

Working on some more recent training videos, but check out these awesome photographs from Dove’s recent shoot! My little pup is growing up fast, and it’s certainly showing in her adolescent behavior. We will talk about that next!!

29/11/2021

Showing off her holiday spirit in the most Dove-way she knows how. 🐰

19/11/2021

I can’t believe I caught it on video, but Dove just had her first ever BIG GIRL ALERT!

We were working on the formal retrieve, something we just introduced. This was her second session. Near the end, she gave me a very clear, persistent nudge. I had just eaten a ton of pizza and almost brushed it off, thinking there was no way I was going low. A dog’s nose knows better than I do.. I was at 72 and dropping.

Fitting that she turns 8 months today. What a superb dog that has given me my confidence back. I don’t really believe that I’ve trained her to do this, I was (and still am!) so clueless when it comes to scent training. Good girl, Dove!!

28/10/2021

I keep telling her that her head is gonna get stuck that way if she keeps it up… The flapping lip kills me. 😂

17/10/2021

What’s this? An update? 😯

Training with Dove has been a little slow and repetitive, so I haven’t found much motivation to post anything new. But this weekend, we built our scent wheel and it’s definitely refreshed my mojo!

Our scent wheel has six ports that I can hide the low blood sugar sample in. They’re just shower drains that I can easily remove from the bases. It’s also on a lazy Susan, so I can mix up the scents easily. Eventually, I will add in blank cotton swabs, then in-range samples that she has to distinguish from the low sample.

I will teach Dove to “alert” (nose nudge) at the low sample port, but for now, I’m marking and rewarding her any time she sniffs the port I know the sample is in. I use verbal encouragement to get her to keep walking and sniffing around the wheel.

Happy training! 🩸

12/09/2021

I decided to take Dove in the backyard for another low blood sugar scent work session to mix up our environments a bit.

Thanks to some advice from good friends, Dove is looking more relaxed and confident in the criteria I’m asking of her. At this point in our training, I only give Dove a good reward when I hear her sniffing. If she just pushes her nose into the tin, I wait her out. We are again incorporating the alert behavior into training, but I make sure to always reward for sniffing the scent in between.

Happy training!

10/09/2021

Dove had her longest public access trip to date, and she did super!

I was prepared with tons of treats and lots of patience. One thing we struggle with it sitting still quietly for a little bit. She tends to whine when she thinks we should be moving, so I kept a higher rate of reinforcement to keep her attention. She did so well around lots of people, kids, and shopping carts. This is definitely something to work on with your service dogs in training, but good genetics with a confident, tolerant dog is so helpful.

She’s becoming more used to her Gentle Leader the more we use it. Loose leash walking is a time-consuming skill to teach a puppy and we work on it daily.

Happy training!

05/09/2021

Something really cool just happened and I wanted to share it with you all!

I was in the middle of treating a low blood sugar (which means I was shoving an ice cream sandwich in my face 🤫) and Dove padded over and sniffed the back of my knee. I look back to her only to see her use her nose to nudge my leg. I was baffled for a second. We put a pause on training the alert to focus on the scent. I was in a fog of not feeling like we were making progress. But… progress happens when you practice. I can’t be paralyzed by the fear of messing up to ultimately never practice. If you put in the time, results will show. Dog noses are mind blowing. We are getting somewhere, friends. 💙

Happy training!

Video description: I presented my leg to Dove after her initial baby alert and caught her doing it again. Of course I threw a party for her after!

25/08/2021

As I mentioned in my last video, I’ve gone back to just building the value of my low blood sugar scent. We’ve had a few sessions off-camera as I figure out our game plan. She has a very nice alert behavior but I felt I was rewarding that more than the scent, so she started offering a nose nudge instead of fixating on the scent in the tin.

I’m struggling a bit with puppy brain. I’ve found that having our sessions while Dove’s on a platform like the Klimb helps keep her brain (and her body) in one place. She tends to disengage and wander off more without it. So that’s a plus! I’m using a mix of liverwurst and baby food (yes it smells as disgusting as you imagine) to reward her since I feel her engagement could be better. It’s still not as great as I’d like, but I let her take breaks as she needs them. I just reset when she tells me she’s ready to go again, and in general we just do short sessions.

It’s been really hard on me to not have an instructor working with me. I know very little about scentwork and I really thrive off feedback. I feel lost most sessions which frustrates me. I have to do better with this as I know Dove can feel it. I don’t know if we’re making progress or if I’m messing up, or if I’m even on the right tracks. I’m going off online resources and my own limited experience! We’re learning together, and I need to have patience for both of us. I know we can do this, but it’s hard to fight through it some days. I just try to remember that she’s still very young and we have lots of time together to figure this out!!

18/08/2021

Dove, out in the world and rocking her new vest!

We’ve been practicing a lot recently with general manners and being able to settle in busier environments. That’s a long road of maturity and setting good expectations, so we are consistently taking baby steps. And we’re proud of those baby steps! It helps that she’s a naturally confident and tolerant girl.

In our scent training sessions, I’ve noticed that she’d gotten caught up in the nose nudge alert. She does it very well! But that’s not the thing I want her to find most rewarding. So we’re taking some steps back to focus on building the value of just the scent. We will add in more fun games and share those with you all. Training is problem solving with your dog… embrace those challenges. 😉

Happy training!

12/08/2021

We’re practicing fading that “alert” verbal cue after she smells the low scent. It’s going pretty well!

Some days, I’m not happy with the level of engagement from Dove. She’s a puppy, she’s smart, and she’s not over-the-top food motivated so the struggle is normal, but it challenges me for sure. I often need to break up even our short sessions. Here, you can see me recognize that Dove needed a brain break (and that I needed some cardio, apparently). Acting like a fool with an annoying voice is pretty exciting to dogs. I managed to change up her emotional state a bit before continuing our session.

Happy training!

08/08/2021

Putting some pieces to👏🏼ge👏🏼ther👏🏼

Our first (very short) session of chaining together the low blood sugar scent with the nudge alert. Our focus remains on building the value of the scent, but I feel comfortable starting to piece it with her alert behavior.

She’s becoming more food motivated as we get over the puppy tummy troubles and gain better ability to focus. Here we’re using shredded chicken, something that she turned her nose to earlier (I know, right?).

Happy training!

05/08/2021

It’s been crazy busy at work these past few weeks but I finally got a video of me introducing Dove’s nose nudge alert.

I won’t type a crazy description, but I taught her “touch” very early which was to touch her nose to my palm. I am shaping that behavior into a touch to my thigh and eventually, a hard, persistent nudge to my thigh. To do this I use a piece of tape to help transfer the behavior. This was our first session as I want to continue to separate the scent and alert sessions. I want emphasis on the scent—the alert can come later!

Happy training!

29/07/2021

Photos by Liv did a FABULOUS job capturing Dove and her charismatic spirit.

For anyone who does pet photography, especially working with puppies, I admire your patience and flexibility. My god does this girl have to be on the move at all times!

23/07/2021

Training update! This may be more of an insight in what behavior I look for in a session before I mark and reward something—my criteria.

My friend Kathryn Eland was talking to me about scent training today and mentioned that a common mistake trainers make is moving on to the alert too soon before getting a solid foundation in the scentwork. If the dog believes the alert pays them more than the actual scent, they may start to false alert simply because of its more prominent reinforcement history.

So I really try to only mark and reward Dove when I can hear her sniff the tin. It’s sometimes hard to discern, so there will be error, but I really want to communicate to her that actually utilizing her nose is very rewarding. Here’s a quick video of what that sounds and looks like. I am ignoring her pawing motion—this behavior should extinguish on its own as Dove learns there is no payout for doing it!

Happy training! 🩸

22/07/2021

Dove is 18 weeks old today! Happy 4.5 months to her and her siblings. 🎈

16/07/2021

Just a quick video of loose leash walking exercises in Home Depot. It was a quick trip, less than ten minutes, and I made sure to bring a high value food reward. I recently purchased a silicone squeeze tube and mixed some wet food with baby food to get the right consistency. I’m rewarding her with that in this video.

Any time she creates tension in the lead, I stop and lure her back to me, only rewarding when the leash loosens again. This can be frustrating at times for sure! That’s why we keep our sessions short and sweet. If she’s on a harness, I do allow her more freedom to pull a bit, as long as she’s not dragging me over, as eventually I’d like to do bikejoring with her (a sport where the dog runs in front of a mountain bike, helping to pull it with a harness). I also want to be able to take hikes without her feeling pressured to stay right by my side.

Happy training!!

12/07/2021

Thought I’d update you all with the session we just completed! I’m trying to make an effort to do our short trainings in different areas of the house. Eventually, we will practice in all kinds of environments, from work, to parks, to grocery stores.

In this session, I’m beginning to ask for a little more persistence with her sniff and a little more pressure from her nose to the tin. I will be teaching Dove a nudge alert with her nose, so I’m encouraging this behavior now. However, I still want to be sure to only reward when I hear her sniffing. I don’t want the tin to just become a target for her to press! I also am slowly covering the tin with more of my hand when I feel she can handle it, so she won’t always use the tin as a cue to sniff.

I’m happy with the progress we’re making with not using the baby food. I think eventually I’ll be able to reintroduce it in more distracting environments, but I’m enjoying her focus and engagement, even while keeping the sessions short for her puppy brain. Happy training! 🩸

09/07/2021

I’ve been doing a bit of problem solving with Dove in regards to our scent work sessions. 💭

I initially used baby food as a reward for Dove, since it was incredibly high value and I wanted to build that strong association with my low blood sugar scent. In our third and fourth sessions, I had some trouble gaining Dove’s focus. She loves the baby food, yes, but she can get a little too distracted by it. Dove offers different known behaviors as you can see in the first part of this video in an effort to get the reward and isn’t engaged with me. She also tends to lick much more with the liquid reward, which is a behavior I want to extinguish so I wasn’t doing myself any favors there!

I didn’t think she was learning what I really wanted her to in our sessions, so I switched up the reward. I was hesitant to go with a lower value reward at first, but I found that cheese was high enough value for her to work but low enough that she’d focus on me and not getting frantic. She actually takes the time to sniff the tin, which is the behavior I was going after.

Dog training is trial and error. I am not a person who thrives when I encounter road blocks, so this is a challenge for me! Learning is a continuous process with lots of room for growth. 💙

08/07/2021

Keep up with Dove’s happenings over on Instagram! 📸

Instagram.com/diabeticalertdove

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Videos

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. 🩸

Psssst… a baby live alert?

Something really cool just happened and I wanted to share it with you all! I was in the middle of treating a low blood sugar (which means I was shoving an ice cream sandwich in my face 🤫) and Dove padded over and sniffed the back of my knee. I look back to her only to see her use her nose to nudge my leg. I was baffled for a second. We put a pause on training the alert to focus on the scent. I was in a fog of not feeling like we were making progress. But… progress happens when you practice. I can’t be paralyzed by the fear of messing up to ultimately never practice. If you put in the time, results will show. Dog noses are mind blowing. We are getting somewhere, friends. 💙 Happy training! Video description: I presented my leg to Dove after her initial baby alert and caught her doing it again. Of course I threw a party for her after!

Fading the verbal “alert” cue after the scent

We’re practicing fading that “alert” verbal cue after she smells the low scent. It’s going pretty well! Some days, I’m not happy with the level of engagement from Dove. She’s a puppy, she’s smart, and she’s not over-the-top food motivated so the struggle is normal, but it challenges me for sure. I often need to break up even our short sessions. Here, you can see me recognize that Dove needed a brain break (and that I needed some cardio, apparently). Acting like a fool with an annoying voice is pretty exciting to dogs. I managed to change up her emotional state a bit before continuing our session. Happy training!

Baby food versus cheese

I’ve been doing a bit of problem solving with Dove in regards to our scent work sessions. 💭 I initially used baby food as a reward for Dove, since it was incredibly high value and I wanted to build that strong association with my low blood sugar scent. In our third and fourth sessions, I had some trouble gaining Dove’s focus. She loves the baby food, yes, but she can get a little too distracted by it. Dove offers different known behaviors as you can see in the first part of this video in an effort to get the reward and isn’t engaged with me. She also tends to lick much more with the liquid reward, which is a behavior I want to extinguish so I wasn’t doing myself any favors there! I didn’t think she was learning what I really wanted her to in our sessions, so I switched up the reward. I was hesitant to go with a lower value reward at first, but I found that cheese was high enough value for her to work but low enough that she’d focus on me and not getting frantic. She actually takes the time to sniff the tin, which is the behavior I was going after. Dog training is trial and error. I am not a person who thrives when I encounter road blocks, so this is a challenge for me! Learning is a continuous process with lots of room for growth. 💙

Life is unpredictable—sometimes your local sky man flies by when you least expect it! In all seriousness, socialization isn’t about letting your dog meet every human on the street or allowing her to play with every dog she passes by. It’s teaching her how to cope with the every day oddities. It’s impossible to desensitize her to everything, but exposing her to as many sights, sounds, and smells as you can in a positive or neutral light will help her learn to tolerate these things and recover better when she startles. Because, inevitably, it will happen. As always on these adventures, bring lots of treats and if your dog does startle, support her with adding distance and reapproach when she’s in a better mindset. Allow her to examine it and make sure you remain neutral yourself. That way, when YOUR local sky man flies by, you and your dog will be better prepared!

First scent introduction

Today’s the day!! After having Dove for a little over a month, she’s settled enough that I felt comfortable starting to introduce my low blood sugar scent. I used a cotton roll with saliva from when my blood sugar read 67. Normal range for blood sugar of non-diabetics is 80-120. I will introduce scents from around 85 and under so that she can help me catch quickly-dropping lows. She loves the baby food, as expected. A little too much, actually. I saved baby food specifically for scent training because I knew it would be extremely high value. It was, and she was a bit too focused on it, so I intend to use a squeeze tube that is more easily hidden in my pocket or such to help break her fixation on it. In this first session, I simply rewarded her with a few licks any time she sniffed or showed interest in the scent. I was careful not to reward licking the sample—I want to encourage her to use her nose, not mouth. Overall I’m happy with this very short, candid introduction session. It’s quite unceremonious, with all the build up, but be sure to follow us along as we add more criteria and build her association with the scent!! 🩸 🕊

Gentle leader desensitization

Bit of a longer video, but here you can see me working on desensitizing Dove to her Gentle Leader. This is a training tool that works a lot like a horse’s halter, giving the handler more control over the dog’s head and therefore her body movements. Gentle Leaders are helpful for teaching leash walking manners. Dove can still function normally, opening her mouth, drinking, and eating. Like most new equipment, there’s an adjustment period for the dog. I wouldn’t want to simply put it on her and expect her to behave normally—it’s new and it’s touching her face. So we work on creating value in the Gentle Leader by pairing it with lots of positive rewards like food. I made sure she hadn’t eaten dinner yet, but you can see even in this video that I sometimes struggle for her attention and engagement. Psst, that’s expected. She’s just a baby! I remind myself constantly to keep sessions short and sweet. Happy training! 🕊

Not too much training got done today, but we did romp around in the backyard for some play time. This post is sponsored by Dove’s massive ears. 😆

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