We spend a lot of time in the car. Always on the run somewhere, and in Los Angeles, prone to extended periods of being stuck in traffic. While we are in the front seat, the kids aren’t technically far away, but I can’t tell what my daughter’s blood sugar is doing easily or safely while I am driving and she is in the back seat listening to her iPod, playing with her brother, or sleeping. Raven, one of our diabetic alert dogs (a DAD for short), does alert in the car. But we noticed recently that it was noticeably less often, so we decided to go back to the drawing board and work on fine tuning it a bit. This post gives you some background on where we started, some things we tried (that did or didn’t work), and where we are now.
It was just recently announced that Pop Superstar Usher has a child with type 1. Since that information was released I have seen a clamoring for him to become the new face of diabetes. To give all of his money and fame to the cause. More »
Here is hoping that everyone had an amazing Easter. We have had a super busy weekend here, with lots of hiking, some long runs, a rally/Easter egg hunt with our Canine Hope family, and a day at Grandma’s house today. Major had a very busy past couple of days, so we gave him today off, and we took Raven with us on our trip to Nana’s house. More »
I was asked a GREAT question recently: “I wonder if you have tips on keeping up training with a dad. My daughter got hers in December and I want her to keep up her skills.” I realized that I talk a lot about how much work a service dog is, and how much on-going training is required, but I never really showed you what a daily or weekly training regimen looks like. This post will show you a lot of different things we do with our dogs to aid in our working, training, and handling of them on a daily basis. While there are occasions that these dogs get free time, we keep them pretty busy (and they keep us pretty busy) all day (and night) long.
I did a post last year about things that altered blood sugar called Diabetes 101. It was a pretty popular post, so I thought I’d follow it up with a post about things that DON’T affect blood sugar. See those things after the jump:
Spring break is over, the kids went back to school. When I got home last night, I told the kids that after dinner I would take them to the park to go run around. We had some odd blood sugars during the day (normally the case after a week away from school) and had to do a site change at 3am that morning, so we were keeping a close eye on our daughter. It was a beautiful afternoon though, and it seemed like a great night to be outside.
We participated in a local JDRF Walk for a Cure yesterday. I love any and all opportunities to get together with diabetics, parents of diabetics, and our Canine Hope family. It’s always amazing to be surrounded by people that all understand. That get it. That care. And that have a common goal. To see a cure for this awful disease. And when we have the dogs out at a diabetic event, it is fun to be an advocate. The questions from people about what they do, how they do it, can they go anywhere, does your daughter like them, and I bet you get to sleep through the night are always fun to talk about and respond to. But there is one answer to a question that I just can’t put in to words.
“Does this make managing diabetes easier?”
We are walking in the JDRF San Diego Chapter Walk to Cure Diabetes. If you would like to donate to us, you can do so here. We are walking with our Canine Hope family, and we all had some new hardware made for the dogs, these awesome CH collars. I took the dogs outside to get some pictures of the collars. The kids were in the house playing with Angus.
