It was one night 6-8 months after my diagnosis and within the first month of using my insulin pump, I’m in a deep sleep and I am rudely awakened by my morkie Molly. Molly may be MollyMonster during the day but she is typically a good sleeper at night. Her bark was very alerting and I thought that something was very wrong with her. The moment I got up I knew there wasn’t something wrong with her, but something very wrong with me. The first thing I did was to check my blood sugar, and I don’t remember what it was but it was shockingly low, maybe in the 40s or even 30s. I dipped into my stash of low-food and recovered. In the middle of all that I did check on Molly and found she was calm and back asleep once I started to recover. I made note of it as being odd and just brushed it off as probably making weird noises or movements because I was low.
Well, the above scenario continued to happen randomly, and most of the time it was because I was going low. Every once and awhile she would jump into my lap and just incessantly lick my face even with a lot of scolding. She was persistent. I started listening. She was cuing me when my sugars were waaaaay off, before I even noticed.
I spoke with my friends, who are also dog trainers (Good Dog! Dog Training) , and are the people who take care of Molly (and her brother Judd) during the day while I am at work. We started talking and concluded Molly had the tenacity and personality to be a great service animal, my own diabetes alert dog. She is definitely unconventional and definitely been a challenge in changing her from just pet to working dog.
I became very diligent in getting her to cue more accurately and sooner and she is doing it more often and more accurately all the time. She accurately cued me at work (she is a therapy dog too!) the other day when I went very high during a continuing ed class.
Well why the post, right? Well Molly is officially taking over the blog on Mondays, the world of a DaD from her perspective. Cheesy, but certainly fun. I want to show you how we are training together and how she is doing out in the world. And anyways, who doesn’t love her feather trademark? Keep your eyes peeled for her posts on Mondays!
❤ My Sweet Regards,
Suny
PS – She is traveling with me as a service animal for the first time this week. Watch us on Facebook when she takes over the page for the weekend!
Thrive With Diabetes 