Service Dog Saves Girl's Life by Alerting Parents to Medical Emergency

A service dog named Spy in Virginia alerted his owners, Shannon and her husband, to their 9-year-old daughter Raelynn's medical emergency. Raelynn, who has Type 1 diabetes, was sleeping when Spy led her parents to her bedroom. They discovered her blood sugar level was dangerously high at 338 mg/dL, well above the recommended range of 90-150 mg/dL. Diabetic alert dogs like Spy are trained to recognize the scent produced by chemical changes in a person's body during hypoglycemia. They can also be trained to retrieve help or emergency supplies. Raelynn was wearing a continuous glucose monitor, but it was still calibrating at the time. The family expressed gratitude for Spy's life-saving alert.