The story of a boy living with Type 1 and his family's journey to raise and train a diabetic alert dog.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Night Low

Bo tucked back in bed with his boy. 
Night upon night Bo works for us letting us know if Austin is high or low. This morning he alerted at 1:20 am and Austin was 65. One juice box and 15 mins later, his blood sugar was still 65. I gave him another juice box and within 12 minutes Bo re-alerted. Austin was 78. Austin got a carb snack and Bo got cheese and a game of 'get cha.'

Monday, January 18, 2016

GoPro Video: Get Help Command

Bo is trained to get help on command. Now with a GoPro camera and Fetch dog harness we can capture what this behavior looks like from his perspective. In this video you see Bo look for me in my bedroom before continuing down the hall to Austin's room. I was on the floor on the far side of the bed looking at books when he found me. He jumped on the bed and when I didn't respond immediately, he began barking at me. In this video, you see Bo bark, jump up and look back at me to see if I'm following him.

Bo will come to me as his first choice when training this command but if I'm not present, he will go to any person. Bo only gives this behavior on verbal command to 'get help' and this command is only given by Austin. Also, Austin is the only person who rewards Bo with food for retrieving a person and bringing the person to him.

We began training the 'get help' command when Bo was a young pup and we practice it on a regular basis.


Raising Bo: Get Help
Bo is trained to get help on command and now with a GoPro camera and GoPro's Fetch dog harness we can capture what the behavior looks like from Bo's perspective. In this video, you see Bo look for me in my bedroom before continuing down the hall to find me in Austin's room. You also see him jump and bark and circle back to me. When we practice this command it's always Austin that rewards Bo with food for bringing a person back to him. We've been training the 'Get Help' command since Bo was a young pup. #RaisingBo http://raisingbo.blogspot.com
Posted by Jennifer Breton Dearborn on Monday, January 18, 2016