News
Training Pets for a special purpose
Dec 7, 2007
 Picture this – You’re a Diabetic who lives alone and as you slumber, your glucose levels drop alarmingly. Asleep, you don’t experience early warning signs such as confusion and slurred speech. You partially awaken and you recognise you’re having a hypoglycaemic attack, but as you fumble around for a sugar hit, you slip into unconsciousness, which can lead to coma and death.
For a lucky few, a situation like this can be avoided through the use of a hypo alert dog.
These dogs are taught to recognise and prevent their owners from having a hypoglycaemic attack, caused when the sugar level falls too low and the brain becomes starved of glucose, which it needs to function properly.
Bowral diabetic John Mangion relies on his hypo alert dog Panda Bear to warn him of an impending attack.
If he gets vague and confused he knows to grab a jelly bean and boost his sugar levels. But sometimes he doesn’t notice the symptoms and that’s when Panda Bear steps in. The Chinese-Crested dog will lick his face when his blood sugar levels get low, and John is reminded to pop a jelly bean.
Hypo alert dogs are trained to detect a different chemical in the person’s sweat which appears when an attack is imminent, explains Paws for Diabetics Trainer.
Hypo alert training starts early, familiarizing the puppy with the scent of a hypoglycaemic episode from their owner to be and rewarding them when they detect a change in scent.
It takes 18 months to train a hypo alert dog, and with only 7 accredited dogs and 11 in training nationally through the Paws for Diabetics Program, it is hard to get your hands on one.
Panda Bear was unique in the sense that he was trained as an adult to become a hypo alert dog.
John and Janice Mangion noticed Panda Bear had something special when at 11 weeks old he would home in on nursing home residents with a skin infection.
His nose would be glued to the infected area, ignoring the outstretched hand, or friendly pat.
With his pleasant temperament the couple thought he may be suitable as a pets as therapy dog visiting nursing home residents, so he underwent training at the Southern Highlands Kennel and Obedience Club.
The Mangion’s then decided to push him a bit further and introduced him to hypo alert training, and now he follows John everywhere.
Man and dog do spend some time apart when Janice takes panda Bear to visit residents at a few Southern Highland nursing homes.
“Most people have a pet in their life and are not able to take their pet with them (to the nursing home). We take our dogs as something to cuddle,” she says. Janice first became involved in pets as therapy programs 12 years ago when she was working at a mental health facility in Goulburn.
“A lot of them were petrified of dogs because they had been institutionalised. I started bringing a dog in and it was a great hit so I kept doing it,” she recalls.
Kanahooka man Peter Hewitt first heard about pets as therapy programs via his church. He learnt of the success of an American church’s pets as therapy program in nursing homes, and decided to set up a similar program in the Illawarra. In March he and his Labrador Ebony began visiting residents at the Williams Beach Garden Hostel in Kanahooka on a fortnightly basis, and he has since included Towradgi Park nursing home in his travels.
Ebony likes to greet the residents and loves the attention. Peter doesn’t mind either.
“It makes me feel good cause she enjoys it. I enjoy it too; I have a chat and enjoy interacting with other people, “he says.
The residents also reap the benefits.
“Their faces light up, they’re less lonely, less depressed,” Peter says.
William Beach Gardens resident Kay Sharpe agrees.
Source: Mercury Illawarra
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