Click to enlarge JONATHAN CANNON / HERALD DEMOCRAT Katie Jane Braiser's service dog Shot alerts her of a change in her blood sugar by nudging her hands.

BY JONATHAN CANNON

HERALD DEMOCRAT

When most think of service animals, it's usually a guide dog they envision, but in the past few years trainers have been discovering a number of new purposes for which dogs can be trained.

For two local high school students their dogs help them monitor their blood sugar.

Sherman Junior Heather Parker said she relies on Elvis her service dog to alert her to the highs and lows in her blood sugar, which changes regularly and rapidly.

Before Parker got a service dog she was often completely unaware when her blood sugar changes.

"I really can't tell when my blood sugar is high or low, and I'd end up somewhere else in the building," Parker said. "I'll have either had a seizure or be staring at the wall."

Elvis is Parker's companion everywhere.

"Elvis started out going to school as a puppy and I let (other students pet him) so he'd be used to big groups of people," Parker said. "He likes school a lot."

Parker, who hopes to go away to Texas Tech University in a few years and said she hopes Elvis will make that possible by monitoring her levels at night.

Denison Freshman Katie Jane Braiser also suffers from diabetes with extreme highs and lows. She was diagnosed two-and-a-half years ago and before she got Shots, her black lab-mix service dog, her parents had to regularly get up at night to check her levels.

Both girls are active in extra-curricular activities to which they take their dogs, and both dogs have alerted the girls of a change in sugar levels from as far as 100 yards away.

The dogs detect the levels through the girls scent on their breaths, in their perspiration or even in the fluid in their eyes. The dogs are even more accurate than the testing meters, which can be off by as much as 20 percent, Trainer Liz Norris said.

"The dogs are never wrong," Norris told Braiser after Shots alerted to a change that didn't immediately register on the meter.

Often the dogs alert their owners to changes before the meter can detect them. After alerting the dogs will continue to alert the owner until they perform a test and stabilize their blood sugar.

Besides serving as guide dogs and diabetic service dogs, Norris has trained dogs to monitor the wiring on mobile life support equipment, assist deaf and hearing-impaired owners and provide seizure alerts.

Norris said the most unusual training she's ever done was a dog for a teen who used a breathing machine for sleep apnea and was prone to knocking off his mask at night.

Norris said he wouldn't wake up on his own, but the dog was trained to jump on his chest when the mask came off to wake him. The service dog allowed him to go away to college.

Norris said she started out doing obedience training, but as more and more clients asked about service dogs she began to move into the new area, starting Pawsibilities Unleashed. The non-profit now provides service dogs to individuals throughout the country.

When Norris sets out to train a service dog she starts out by determining the type of dog that best matches the owners personality. Next she looks for dogs that are naturally born with a desire to serve.

She said the best service dogs are often the ones that tend to get annoying to the normal pet owner.

Norris said she can do the training in about six months, but the hard part is training the owner.

"The problem is the people," she said. "They want that automatic remote control TV."

Norris said the owners must be willing to commit to continually training their dogs and working with them on the training.

Owners must also give their service dogs time off work, if possible. Norris said for the dogs the jobs are like human jobs.

"The dogs need so much time off work to destress," she said.

And for the dogs with jobs like Elvis and Shot where there's no time off, Norris said the stress is too much for some of them and they often go on to be mobility dogs.

Both girls said they run into few problems when they go into stores, and Norris said most owners are accommodating to this new breed of service dog, but some struggle with how to determine if the animal is a legitimate service animal or not.

Norris said there is some problem with pet owners buying service animal vests for their pets and business owner are limited by two questions they can ask: "Is this a service animal, what is your disability?"

However, Norris said there are some other rights that business owners have and will hold a question and answer session at 6 p.m. Tuesday night at Grayson County College's Center for Workforce Learning the help with the problem.

Norris said she hopes to see business owners, especially of restaurants and hotels, at the meeting along with anyone interested in obtaining a service animal.