Ridiculous Service Dog Stories

This has to be one of the most ridiculous service dog stories I’ve heard to date.  In fact, it has to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard, period.

Here’s the article.

New Addition Ready to Sniff out Disaster

The gist of it is, some service dog program placed a “service dog” with a little boy that has poorly controlled diabetes.  The program told the little boy and his parents that the dog was trained to alert him to changes in his blood sugar.  Apparently the family bought that.  The article says that in time, the dog will be trained to bring the boy a juice box if his blood sugar gets low, but it hasn’t been trained to do so yet.

There are so many things wrong with this story, it’s hard to know where to start.  But I’ll give it a shot.

1. The article says the dog is only seven weeks old.  I thought that sounded too young for a puppy to be taken from its mother, but to make sure, I did some googling.  Numerous websites state that puppies should not be taken from their mothers until they are at least eight weeks old.  I did not find a single reference that said it was OK to take a puppy from its mother before it is eight weeks old.  Why on earth is this program placing a seven week old puppy with anyone?
   
2.  The article says the dog is only seven weeks old.  It’s too young to be trained to do anything.  It’s not even old enough to be housebroken; some additional googling tells me that puppies are not ready to begin housebreaking until they are about eight weeks old. 
   
3. Dogs cannot be trained to alert to changes in blood sugar.  Some dogs do seem to be able to detect changes in blood sugar, just like some dogs are able to detect an impending seizure, but no one teaches them to do it.  Experts don’t even know how they do it, though they assume it has something to do with scent.  Plus, you can’t reliably produce the changes in scent or whatever it is in order to train a dog to recognize it, at least not without seriously endangering a person.  Hopefully the parents in the article were not feeding their child lots of sugar in order to make his blood sugar rise to a dangerous level in order to allow the dog to sniff him in order to try to train it to alert to that. 
   
4. Dogs can be trained to respond to changes in blood sugar, if they possess the innate ability to recognize those changes.  They can be trained to signal their owners with a specific behavior, like repeatedly nudging them, if their blood sugar gets too high or too low.  A seven week old puppy can’t be trained to do that, though.  It’s too little to be trained to do anything.
   
5. Dogs can be trained as diabetes response dogs, meaning that if their owners begin to display certain behaviors, the dogs know to go fetch the glucose monitor or juice or something like that.  This article states that this dog will eventually be trained to do those things.  It’s not trained to do them yet, though, because it’s too little to be trained to do anything.  If it’s not trained to do anything, it’s not a service dog.
   
6. The article states that the puppy will not be going to school with the little boy.  That’s good to know, because a seven week old puppy hasn’t had all its shots yet and should not be out in public much.  Also, a seven week old puppy is not housebroken, and I don’t think a puppy should be using the potty in the classroom.  Or in the school cafeteria.  Plus, service dogs are supposed to be trained to be well-behaved in public before you take them into public places that typically restrict pets and a seven week old puppy has not been trained to behave in public because it’s too little to be trained to do anything!
   
7. The article says that even though the puppy will not be accompanying the little boy to school, it will still be able to alert to changes in his blood sugar.  The article states that the puppy can detect these changes from half a mile away.  I tried googling to find out from how far away a dog can smell something but I couldn’t find the answer.  However, I am quite certain a dog cannot smell someone’s blood sugar level from half a mile away!  This is the most ridiculous claim of the article and it’s hard to believe the child’s parents are naïve enough to believe it.  But apparently they are.
   
8. Even if this untrained seven week old puppy could alert to changes in the little boy’s blood sugar from half a mile away, how would it alert the boy in order to be of any help to him?  Is the puppy supposed to signal one of the parents if the little boy’s sugar gets too high or low?  Does that mean one of his parents will stay at home with the puppy all day while he is at school?  Because while a person with a disability that needs the assistance of a service dog has a legal right to take that dog into public places with him, the parents of a person with a disability do not have a legal right take that person’s service dog into public places with them.  So the parents could not take the puppy to work with them (unless their employers agreed and it did not violate any local health codes), or to the store, or to a medical appointment, etc.
   
9. And if the parents did sit at home all day with the puppy, and the puppy did signal them that the little boy’s sugar had dropped or gotten too high, what would the parents then do with that information?  Call the school?  Let the school secretary know?  And then the school secretary could go to the boy’s classroom to let him know that his dog says his sugar is too high or too low?  How much time would that take?  Wouldn’t the boy have figured out his sugar was too low or too high by then?  If he didn’t recognize it by how he felt, probably the teacher would have recognized it in that much time because he would have passed out from low blood sugar or something!  So how would the dog be helping him?