DAD - Diabetic Alert Dog
We have been entertaining this idea for a while, and I think last night I found what we need to make it real. Mischka is to become a DAD - Diabetic Alert Dog.
I know it will be a long journey and not an easy one, but I believe that with the help of this forum we will succeed.
I want to document our progress and that's where we start:
Mischka is a rottweiler and she is turning 4 yo this Friday. She is very well behaved and calm around other people, but she is not exactly obedient in the sense dog trainers would want her to be. We didn't train her, but she spends 99% of her time around us and this was the case since we adopted her when she was 3.5 months old. She is eager to please us, whatever it takes, and she feels really bad if she knows she upset us. At the moment she has only two stable commands - "Sit" and "Paw", and she learned to alert us when she needs to go out and when she wants to eat. She understands: "To the car", "Inside", "Let's go", and maybe some other basic phrases.
The goal is to teach her to alert Kirez when his blood sugar drops below 70.
Plan for step 1:
- Come up with an alert behavior
- Teach the alert behavior to Mischka
- Collect low BG scent samples
- Combine the scent and the alert behavior
Challenge #1 - I need to come up with the behavior, that will become an alert. It has to be something unique. I don't want it to be vocal, because it would disturb people around us. But it has to be something that will wake us up if blood sugar drops when we are asleep. Many people use 'Shake' (our 'Paw') as an alert, and it would have worked, if Mischka didn't think that this is the ultimate way to get treats.
I will be the one training Mischka in the beginning, because we don't want the live scent from Kirez to interfere with the training.
Let's see how this will go :)
I know it will be a long journey and not an easy one, but I believe that with the help of this forum we will succeed.
I want to document our progress and that's where we start:
Mischka is a rottweiler and she is turning 4 yo this Friday. She is very well behaved and calm around other people, but she is not exactly obedient in the sense dog trainers would want her to be. We didn't train her, but she spends 99% of her time around us and this was the case since we adopted her when she was 3.5 months old. She is eager to please us, whatever it takes, and she feels really bad if she knows she upset us. At the moment she has only two stable commands - "Sit" and "Paw", and she learned to alert us when she needs to go out and when she wants to eat. She understands: "To the car", "Inside", "Let's go", and maybe some other basic phrases.
The goal is to teach her to alert Kirez when his blood sugar drops below 70.
Plan for step 1:
- Come up with an alert behavior
- Teach the alert behavior to Mischka
- Collect low BG scent samples
- Combine the scent and the alert behavior
Challenge #1 - I need to come up with the behavior, that will become an alert. It has to be something unique. I don't want it to be vocal, because it would disturb people around us. But it has to be something that will wake us up if blood sugar drops when we are asleep. Many people use 'Shake' (our 'Paw') as an alert, and it would have worked, if Mischka didn't think that this is the ultimate way to get treats.
I will be the one training Mischka in the beginning, because we don't want the live scent from Kirez to interfere with the training.
Let's see how this will go :)