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Comment by missrobbie on May 11, 2013 at 6:49am

I'm going to keep giving out this advice but I hope every diabetic who wants to train their own DAD reads "Training your Diabetic Alert dog" by Ritz Martinez. This book that came out in either Feb or March 2013 tells diabetic almosts all you need to do to train your own dog.

Comment by Beth on April 7, 2013 at 3:21pm

Lisa, can you please provide a working link for your foundation, I would like to read more about it.

Comment by Lisa Kelly on April 7, 2013 at 2:13pm

I'm new to this forum and have read with interest this thread in response to Dr. Quick's email....it is exactly that response that I would love to have the research to refute his statement and validate what we all see our DADs able to do,consistently and ahead of the present technology. My foundation Dogs for Cures is actively looking to fund research that would provide this scientific justification- so with all the great minds out there let's crowd source a protocol and we will continue to try and get a research institution to take this on....

Comment by Lexee on April 7, 2013 at 7:30am

How many of us are disabled or on Medicare? How much does it cost your insurance company for one Hypo event. We have to convince prove DADs can save government and insurances money and improve the quality of our lives.
If you have trained a DAD you know it takes many months of consent training, training is never over, it must be reinforced. After seeing the training and participating in it, I do not believe any trainer can offer a finished DAD for sale, the diabetic must have some participation in the process, long term. Trainers can background and train for public access, and then train on scent samples, but, after that the diabetic has to be very involved in the training.
I am eight months into training a 2 year old Lab. She is alerting at more that 70%. Remember Dogs are not machines.

Comment by Kathy on April 6, 2013 at 4:09am

I just read the article. It was written by someone who has no experience with DADs. He was trying to tell about them, but injected his own doubts into the story. He was quoting people who claim that their DAD can alert from extreme distances and the fact that there is no science behind the claims of their abilties. It was a disappointing story and it bothers me to see this kind of thing. It will prove to be a hindrance in ever getting insurance to cover a DAD.

Comment by Beth on April 5, 2013 at 12:32pm

As to the issue of DADs and CGMs...I can tell you that my dog is more accurate. I have noticed a "lag" with my CGM and my dog is "real time" :)

Comment by vickim1970 on April 5, 2013 at 12:26pm

My dog is my back up plan. And she is great at it. I test my sugars when I'm supposed to test, 5-6 times a day. And if I feel low, I test. That being said, there have been times, including when I was driving, that I didn't feel low and my DAD alerted me. I tested, and she was right. They are not meant to replace a meter, but to alert someone to a low that they don't feel, and my DAD does it reliably. I'm shocked sometimes when she alerts, but I test, and she's right. Just my experience.

Comment by MinnesotaAnn on April 5, 2013 at 11:35am

I have not participated in any of these "nosy" type surveys as I expected the results to be used against us and I do not care IF they think the dogs do not work because I KNOW otherwise....

Comment by Sheri on April 5, 2013 at 10:41am

I just received this email, and wanted to share it with everybody. I was very surprised when I read it, and wanted to see what others think about it!

Diabetic Alert Dogs – Still an Unproven Concept
By Dr. Bill Quick, Health ProFriday, April 05, 2013

A year ago, I wrote Diabetes Alert Dogs Are An Unproven Concept. A recent brief report in Diabetes Care, Diabetic Alert Dogs: A Preliminary Survey of Current Users doesn’t change my mind. As I previously pointed out, there aren’t any published peer-reviewed studies to support the claims that DADs (diabetes alert dogs) are useful, nor is there any information about how or why these dogs could react to changing glucose levels.

The latest report is a small survey of owners of diabetes alert dogs. The results are glowing: “Respondents reported significant decreases in the frequency of severe … and moderate … hypoglycemia since DAD placement, as well as glycosylated hemoglobin levels.”

But there are huge problems with this report. First of all, there’s nothing in the discussion as to how the survey owners were identified, other than that they were users of the DAD-training company run by one of the authors. Unless the survey went out to everyone who had ever used their dogs (including those whose dogs might have unsuccessful when placed in the home), and unless humongous efforts were made to assure near-100% response rates, we don’t know what responses non-inquired or non-responders might have provided.

Second, this was an on-line survey, so reported data about rates of hypoglycemia and changes in A1C couldn’t be verified, and hence are completely suspect. And the report that there were changes in A1C are not verified by including the pre- and post- A1C levels. Furthermore, why would one even want a decrease in A1C if the patient was already having substantial problems with hypoglycemic events?

Next, the survey itself is not included in the report, nor a hyperlink to where it might be found. Depending on the wording of the questions, it might have included highly biased questions of the “when did you stop beating your wife” variety.

Finally, as the authors point out, “prospective studies of larger numbers of DAD owners, with objective measures to assess DAD accuracy and clinical outcomes are needed.” I completely agree.

As I’ve said before: Until a well-designed study is carried out, presumably with the patients wearing continuous glucose monitors (CGM) so glucose levels can be continuously monitored, we won’t know. With CGM, one would easily be able to determine the percentage of lows that caused the animals to react, and whether they sense and react to changes in blood sugar. Another benefit of CGM is that the number of times the dogs react when the sugar is normal and stable (false positives) can be ascertained. Until we know such information from a well-designed and published study, it’s risky to assume that dogs are more reliable than CGM.

Comment by PaulaO on November 30, 2012 at 4:19pm

http://bigcountryhomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=552912

Story of a DAD scam. Sadly, there a lot of these out there.

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