A black Lab named Rita alerts whenever her handler’s blood sugar levels fluctuate – bringing peace of mind to everyone in the family.
by Jen Reeder
It was the middle of the night. Latha Dawn Sullivan was sleeping soundly in her lounge chair when she woke up to her black Lab, Rita, straddling her chest and licking her face.
Because Rita is Sullivan’s service dog for Type 1 diabetes, she knew she needed to check her blood sugar levels. Sure enough, they were low.
“I wasn’t waking up, I didn’t know. I didn’t feel it,” she recalls. “She woke up and then she knew to come and alert and wake me up right there. And Rita is so amazing that she’s able to detect my lows at least about ten minutes before they get to the dangerous level. So that gives me time to get up, get some food, get some juice before I get to that level where I can’t do it for myself.”
Prior to partnering with Rita earlier this year, the 51-year-old Florida resident wouldn’t wake up to alarms from her continuous glucose monitor. She was so frightened of dying in her sleep that she had to add her mother and oldest son to the monitor’s alert system to call them if she didn’t wake up – then they’d phone her to try to get her up.
“So my sleep pattern changed, and I slept less because I was just really scared to go to sleep,” she says. “I was scared somebody wouldn’t wake me up in time or I wouldn’t wake up at all.”
Sullivan has dealt with diabetes since childhood – typically being hospitalized at least once a month as a kid – and is considered a “brittle diabetic” because her blood sugar levels fluctuate so much and never really stay in range. While diabetes affects each person differently, when Sullivan’s blood sugar drops too low, she shakes, can’t recognize what’s going on around her, and gets very hungry.
When her blood sugar levels are too high, she feels nauseated, can’t walk around, feels weak, and suffers headaches.
“I was very brittle. I still am,” she says. “I do rollercoasters up and down, up and down, and those effects on a diabetic are very negative effects.”
She’d started researching ways to get a service dog for Type 1 diabetes, but many service dog organizations required fundraising over $20,000 – a sum that proved “almost impossible.”
Luckily, she called Dogs Inc, a Florida-based nonprofit that offers guide dogs to people who are blind or vision impaired, and service dogs to veterans with PTSD – at no charge to handlers. She learned they were piloting a new service dog program for people with Type 1 diabetes – and after submitting her application, learned that Rita was going to be the first dog to graduate from the program, and she’d be the first recipient.
“That was just amazing to me to hear that,” she says. “With everything I’ve been through all my life being a brittle diabetic, to hear that I was going to get Rita was I think the best thing I could have ever heard, really. Other than my kids and my grandkids, one of the best things that I’ve ever received is Rita.”
Alysia Santos, scent detection program manager at Dogs Inc, is “beyond thrilled” to have the first team graduate from the scent detection program and have the partnership be so successful in just the first 90 days.
“Rita has just blown it out of the water with her accuracy and her willingness to step into this role,” she says. “It’s been really exciting to watch their bond grow.”
Rita and other Labs in the program learn to alert to scent samples donated by local people with Type 1 diabetes. Samples are collected when blood sugar levels are low and high, as well as in range, so the dogs learn what to ignore, and what to alert to.
Since the nonprofit uses positive training methods and rewards dogs with praise and treats, food-motivated Labs are a natural fit, according to Santos.
“Labs are just great,” she says. “They are so happy all the time. They do love to eat, which makes them easier to train. But beyond that, they acclimate to the human world so well. They’re patient with people. They’re able to be confident in more busy environments. While some of them may be sillier and higher energy than others, they have that sense of calm, which can be quite grounding for anyone who may be benefitting from a service dog.”
Service dogs for people with Type 1 diabetes also need to be able to “intelligently disobey” their handler, she noted. For instance, if the handler tells their service dog to lie down and stay under the table at a restaurant, the dog needs to be independent enough to detect the target scent and alert their handler to a blood sugar fluctuation.
“It’s a really special dog that we’re looking for that’s able to complete this task,” she says.
Rita has proved to be that kind of special dog. She alerted to Sullivan’s dropping blood sugar levels on just the second day of meeting her, and has been alerting at high accuracy at home. She is trained to fetch a kit with an emergency shot kept in a specific place in Sullivan’s home, but she hasn’t needed to yet since she’s been detecting low levels at least 10 minutes early.
“Since I’ve had Rita with the numbers that we programmed in for her to keep me in, my blood sugar ranges have not gone as low so many times. They’re coming fewer and farther in between,” she says. “I think I’ve had maybe three lows in the middle of the night, and she has pretty much nailed those also.”
Now Rita has brought peace of mind to Sullivan, her mother, and three children. Meanwhile, Rita loves her job – and Sullivan. They do a sort of tango in the kitchen because Rita tries to stay on Sullivan’s left side even when she’s cooking.
The Lab also loves kids and squeaky toys, and behaves well in church. On walks together, strangers often comment on how beautiful Rita is.
Sullivan hopes other people with Type 1 diabetes will consider partnering with a service dog from Dogs Inc because of the positive impact Rita has already made on her own life.
“She’s just an angel,” she says. “She really is. She’s such a blessing.”
For more information, visit: dogsinc.org/get-a-dog/service-dog-programs/diabetes.
