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Diabetic Alert Dog Sensed 4-Year-Old’s Blood Sugar Drop From More Than Five Miles Away

We all know that dogs have an incredible sense of smell.

In fact, a dog named Hero detected a drop in blood sugar from five miles away!

Hero is trained to detect when his human’s blood sugar levels are too low or too high.

Hero lives in Utah and watches out for Sadie, a 4-year-old girl with Down Syndrome and diabetes.

If Hero senses that Sadie’s blood sugar has changed too an unsafe level, he will alert her parents.

One day, Sadie was in her classroom at Deerfield Elementary school and Hero was at home – five miles away.

Michelle, Sadie’s mom, said Hero started to whine, which wasn’t something he normally did at home.

dog and girl

Image Credit: N/A

Hero wouldn’t stop whining either – Sadie’s blood sugar had fallen, and Hero could tell!

Michele sent text messages and called Sadie’s teacher, Kimberly Stoneman once she realized what Hero was telling her.

Stoneman checked Sadie’s blood sugar, and sure enough, it had fallen from 122 to 82!

The lower the number, the more dangerous it is – Sadie could have ended up in a diabetic coma if her blood sugar is too low for an extended period.

Not with Hero on the job! KC Owen’s, Hero’s trainer, said she used a bottled scent to train him to detect low and high blood sugars.

Hero, a Labrador, is bred for his nose.

Owen’s said that Labs have hundreds of millions of receptors in their nose that help them smell things two miles away.

No one is quite sure how Hero managed to detect the change in Sadie’s blood sugar that day – it was divine intervention!

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