Heidi the Wonder Dog!

Last night started out like any other school night.

The Kids and I had dinner as usual, both did their BGL's and bolused for the carbs as usual (although "usual" for my teenage son involves about 10 minutes of nagging and then the house being turned upside down while he looks for his meter and then gives me 16 different excuses for why he hasn't done a SINGLE BGL test since the one I did on him when I woke him at 7am to get ready for school!).

After dinner our 19 month old Spoodle, Heidi, was laying across my daughter's legs. Heidi was grumpy, she had been unwell during the day (eating the contents of the cat's litter box probably didn't help!) - and just wanted to be left alone.

Normally Heidi will sit with me in the evenings because she knows that I just let her be, it's her "chill-out" time before she goes to bed. But last night, she chose to lay across my daughter's legs.

I went to give her a pet, just to let her know that I knew she wasn't feeling great. If the kids try to pet her when she's in "chill-out" mode she will growl at them, but she knows the difference between my hand and the kids - and never does it with me.

Last night she not only growled at me, she also snapped!

Hmmmmm - something not right here.

So, think back over the last 15 minutes or so - she has stuck to my daughter like glue.

Decide to tell my daughter to check her BGL - lots of arguing, "but I just checked half an hour ago! We just had dinner, and I had a snack afterwards, I tested, and bolused and I'm not going to test again! MY FINGERS ARE SORE!"

Heidi gets more grumpy and now has started barking.

Tell my daughter she has to test - eventually, reluctantly, she gives in.

2.9 mmol/L (52.2 mg/dl)!

Heidi the Wonder Dog KNEW that she was low, even though my daughter didn't - and hadn't even felt it!

Not only was she low, but she had 3.5 units of active insulin that had only gone through the pump 30 minutes ago - so she was likely to drop even further!

Good catch Heidi!

These photos were taken about a year ago - Heidi won't leave my daughter's side until 

she recovers from a particularly nasty hypo!

Heidi has not been trained to detect hypo's.

She came to live with us the day after my daughter was discharged from hospital after her diagnosis. I had made arrangements to adopt her several weeks beforehand. She was coming from a breeder that lived some 7 hours drive away from us, so my sister had agreed to pick her up (at that time she lived only 2 hours away from the breeder) and bring her down to us as a surprise for the kids.

Heidi was only 6 weeks old when she joined our family - and right from the start she would hang around my daughter whenever she was low and would not leave her side until her BGL's came back up again. I guess it's the Cocker-Spaniel in her - since they have an exceptional sense of smell.

This was the first time, however, that Heidi has been aggressive and so "vocal" about either of the kids being low - I put that down to her being a bit off colour herself for most of the day and just not having the patience or the energy for us mere humans to pick up her more subtle signs that something is not right.

Heidi, I don't know what we'd do without you!