First *LIVE ALERT* during public access training!!! *Diabetes Alert Service Dog

This is Elizaveta's 19 week training PUPdate!~

She is our 19 week old Golden Retriever puppy training to be a Diabetes Alert Service Dog. Her older brother Cooper has been our Diabetes Alert Service Dog for 8 years and is retiring soon ( he is 9) Cooper was trained by River's Edge Diabetes Alert Service Dogs in College Station, Texas. (He was a started diabetes alert dog meaning we had to finish his training bridging samples to live alerts)

We decided this time to self-train and found Sidekick Retrievers in Orange, Florida. Both Elizaveta's parents are working service dogs and out of last two litters of pups a total of 9 have been or will be trained to be service dogs (with no washouts yet). Ellie had Vollhard temperament testing done at 49 days old. We are hopeful she will be successful, but this is a very long journey and only time will tell.

Ellie 'trains' 3 sessions daily and goes on one outing 4-5x weekly for socialization & Public Access. She is doing well with commands. Ellie does two 5 minute training sessions daily with low blood sugar samples.

We have three type 1 diabetics in our house, myself and two adult kids. Elizaveta will be my diabetes alert dog, but will also alert both kids that are type 1 as well. Cooper has been alerting high and low BG for all three of us for 8 years. He has been an incredible asset, and I can't imagine life without him.

I have hypoglycemia unawareness, this means I do not feel 'low' blood sugar symptoms until I am under 35, this is dangerously low. Cooper beats my Dexcom CGMS 100% of the time. Dexcom sits in the interstitial fluid, so is always 15 minutes behind. For me, this can be dangerous without another tool in the toolbox (Cooper) to help alert me as soon as possible when I am crashing.

Thanks for watching!!