Short answer: No.

Long answer: Yes and no.

• According to other Service Dog trainers, there's a huge problem with what is called "client compliance," which is basically that it's too much to ask the handler with severe diabetes to keep up the training.
  • In other words, the training can be done by the Service Dog agency, but afterward, the client would continually need to reward the dog with practice sessions twice weekly for the rest of its life (or else the training will slowly extinguish). Unfortunately, ths model is not particularly practical for most people.
• However, we have trained a mobility service dog (for a woman who had her leg amputated because of her diabetes) and this responsive, smart, bonded dog who had "learned how to learn" started spontaneously alerting his handler to her low blood sugar (from the smell of ketones on the handler's breath, although other experts think it's the smell of the sweat).
  • Twice, the Service Dog has alerted to when her blood sugar dropped to 25. Both times the handler was sleeping, and once the dog woke her up and the other time she wouldn't awake so the dog went into the other room and woke up the husband by pawing him. The handler tells us that without her service dog she most certainly would have slipped into a coma.
  • 4/20/17: Update: The handler has been doing very poorly health-wise, and when she again slipped into a 32-blood-sugar "nap" the dog was able to wake her up with uncharacteristic behavior--he barked (which he never does) and pawed at her (which he never does) until she woke up and got help.

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