Guardian angel with a wet nose: a dog for a diabetic

In Le Cannet, on the hills above Cannes, eight-year-old Ayana gained an assistant that no device can replace: a Labrador called Verity, trained to detect dangerous fluctuations in blood sugar. This is the first diabetic assistance dog in the Alpes-Maritimes department — she was officially handed over to her owner on Saturday 12 September.

Verity and Ayana from Le Cannet

Ayana has lived with type 1 diabetes since she was two: for six years her parents have been kept tense by nightly checks, constant glucose monitoring and the fear of missing a critical moment. This summer the family got Verity — a Labrador that completed special training with the Acadia association, and on 12 September the dog was officially handed over, reports France 3 Côte d’Azur.

«She is really very kind to me, she is my guardian angel and at the same time my best friend», — says Ayana herself about the dog.

How the dog senses what is hidden from devices

Verity’s secret is her sense of smell. When blood sugar levels fall or rise sharply, the mix of volatile compounds in a person’s breath and sweat changes. A person does not notice this, a modern sensor records the change with a delay, but a dog’s nose detects it immediately.

Verity is trained not just to sense the change, but to alert to it: her signal is a persistent nudge with her muzzle, and if her owner does not respond, the dog rings a bell. She does this roughly thirty minutes before the continuous monitoring system alarms. In diabetes those half hours are the difference between a glass of juice and calling an ambulance.

The Acadia association: a year and a half of training and €25,000

Behind Verity’s arrival is the work of the Acadia association — the only organisation in France that trains assistance dogs for people with diabetes. It was founded in 2015 in Livron-sur-Drôme near Valence, handed over its first dogs to beneficiaries in 2018, and over ten years of work, according to Le Quotidien du Médecin, has produced about 45 dogs.

Breeds are not specifically bred: animals are taken from shelters and guide-dog schools, selected for temperament, health and scent ability. Training lasts approximately a year and a half and costs €25,000 — an amount unaffordable for most families. Therefore Acadia gives the dogs away free of charge, covering expenses with donations and partnerships.

How the training is carried out

• Collecting samples: a child with diabetes collects their sweat and breath on cotton pads — separately during hypoglycaemia and separately when blood sugar is normal.
• Differentiating smells: the dog is taught to distinguish the ‘hypo’ sample from the normal one and is rewarded for choosing correctly.
• Developing the alert: the dog learns to signal a finding — with a nudge of the muzzle or by ringing a bell.
• Adaptation in the family: the animal gets used to the home, school and public places and to how the specific child behaves.

«We show the dog cotton pads with the child’s scent — the hypoglycaemia version and the normal-sugar version. We teach her to spot the difference. And then she learns to give the alert», — explains Florine Munier, coordinator at Acadia.

Life with Verity: signals day and night

Verity has already proven herself in practice: once the dog alerted when Ayana was getting ready for school — a check confirmed that her glucose was dropping, and the family took measures in advance.

«They are alerts both day and night, they reassure me: even if a device does not go off, she will come and nudge me with her muzzle or ring. We have bells in every room of the house», — says the girl’s mother Aurélie Scarduelly.

Not a replacement for devices, but a second line of defence

Assistance dogs do not replace the glucometer and the monitoring system — they work alongside them. The sensor measures what has already happened in the blood, the dog reacts to what is only beginning, and that is its value: the alarm goes off earlier, not more accurately.

Technologies on the Côte d’Azur are also catching up: in August a pharmacy in Roquefort-les-Pins launched AI diagnostics for moles, and about how local doctors assess other seasonal health risks, we wrote in a piece on sugar dust.

What’s next

The handover of Verity is the first such case in the Alpes-Maritimes, but hardly the last: Acadia continues to train dogs for children across France, and the queue of families is longer than the list of graduates. For Ayana and her parents life has already changed — they have an ally by their side who does not tire, does not get distracted and does not wait for a device to catch up with reality.

Figure of the day: €25,000 — that is how much training one assistance dog costs, and Acadia covers the entire amount with donations and partnerships.

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Photo: Venus Wong / Pexels