Diabetic Alert Dogs: A Preliminary Survey of Current Users
- Linda Gonder-Frederick, PHD1,
- Pam Rice, BA2,
- Dan Warren2,
- Karen Vajda, BA1 and
- Jaclyn Shepard, PsyD1
- From the 1Behavioral Medicine Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia; and
- 2Service Dogs by Warren Retrievers, Inc., Culpeper, Virginia
- Corresponding author: Linda Gonder-Frederick, lag3g{at}virginia.edu.
Methods for monitoring blood glucose (BG) levels play many essential roles in diabetes management, and one of the most important is alerting individuals to the occurrence of hypoglycemia. A growing number of individuals with diabetes are turning to the use of Diabetic Alert Dogs (DADs) for hypoglycemia detection, despite their high cost. Testimonials from DAD owners and trainers have reported in the media that the accuracy of trained canine alerts matches that of BG monitoring technology (1,2) and described other benefits attributed to DADs, including improvements in glycemic control and quality of life (QoL). However, with the exception of one abstract from a case study (3) there is no scientific evidence that confirms the ability of DADs to detect hypoglycemia accurately or to improve clinical outcomes and QoL. We …
