When Lisa Kelly’s son, Liam, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes a little more than five years ago, she wanted to do something, and fast. She was determined to make sure her son could live a normal teenage life.

“He wants to be active,” Kelly said. “He played football, he wants to go to college. But if he doesn’t manage his diabetes correctly, he could die.”

A few weeks after the diagnosis, the Kellys attended a medical technology conference in Seattle, seeking solutions.

Some of her conversations with doctors and medical professionals left Kelly wondering about the kinds of quick actions she and her family could take to help Liam live normally with his condition. She was told diabetes treatment was slow and difficult.

“I was frustrated,” Kelly remembered. “I wanted them to be more aggressive about the treatment of my son.”

Later on at the conference, however, Kelly saw a speaker who was accompanied by a large dog that reminded Kelly of the hunting dogs her father had raised her with. At one point during the speaker’s talk, his dog became agitated. The speaker ignored it and went on with his speech, and Kelly found that odd.

Soon afterward, she found out the speaker was diabetic. His dog had been trained to react when it sensed his blood sugar levels were too high or too low.

“I thought, ‘This is the coolest thing,’ ” Kelly said. “‘ How do I get involved in this?’ ”

Now, Liam is a senior at Gig Harbor High School, and Kelly, in addition to her work as a physical therapist, operates the Dogs for Cures Foundation, which helps train and provide diabetic alert dogs (DADs) to families with similar experiences.

The Kellys have their own DAD, Max the black lab, who is Liam’s near-constant companion and has been trained to sense when he is “out of range,” when his blood sugar levels rise too high or dip too low.

Kelly led the Dogs for Cure Workshop in Seattle last weekend, a two-day conference designed to teach its 30 human participants how to train their dogs to serve as diabetic alerters.

Kelly said training a diabetic alert dog is complicated, difficult and requires a high level of commitment.

“You have to be almost obsessed with wanting it to work,” she said. “People want to know how long it takes to train these dogs. And the simple answer is, ‘forever.’ ”

Her family bought Max about a year after Liam was diagnosed from a trainer in Tacoma who specialized in training dogs for search and rescue. He already had been partially trained in obedience, but the Kellys had to do the work on medical support training themselves.

The training included taking “scent samples” of Liam’s clothes and saliva and storing them in their fridge. Kelly said that gave some of their dinner guests a start.

The dogs also must be trained to resist many of their natural impulses, such as scrounging for food on the floor, in order to stay alert and focused on their diabetic owners at all times.

The Americans with Disabilities Act defines a service dog as one that can perform tasks for a person who has a disability. Max and other DADs meet that requirement in three ways, Kelly said, by alerting their owners to blood sugar fluctuations and by retrieving glucose or other food items that can correct blood sugar deficiencies. They also can act as physical support if their owner becomes unsteady.
Medical support dogs are recognized throughout health care and used for many purposes, although Kelly said one of the reasons she started Dogs for Cures was to build awareness about DADs.

The dogs still have not been wholeheartedly embraced by the medical and scientific community, Kelly said, due to a simple problem – no one’s still quite sure what it is they’re sensing that allows them to alert their owners to blood-sugar issues.

“Until we can prove scientifically that dogs can do this, we’re just a great, fuzzy anecdote,” Kelly said.

She’s seen Max work time and again in her own home, and she’s also traveled and spoken to groups and researchers around the country about her experiences. Her goal is to support and share information about how to best train and live with DADs.

Last weekend’s conference, which included some attendees from as far away as Canada and Mexico, featured speakers who have done extensive work with diabetes alert training, including author Rita Martinez, a leading authority on biodetection.

Max joins Liam every day at school, and Kelly said her son has loved having his dog around. After he turned 18, Kelly allowed Liam to get a tattoo, and he chose a large insignia of a medical symbol that reads “Type-1 Diabetic,” circled by pawprints.

Still, Kelly said, a dog isn’t a magical antidote. Living with diabetes requires an intense commitment from the owner, both to train the dog and to be vigilant in responding to its alerts, to diligently monitor and keep statistics on their health.

Liam must regulate his blood sugar levels many times daily, and even with Max’s help, he’s still vulnerable to diabetic episodes. Since Max's arrival in the Kelly household, however, Liam's blood sugar levels have been mostly excellent.

Kelly’s hope is that, by spreading the word about what DADs can do, through training and sharing information and experience her family has accrued, she can help others relieve some of the difficulty and stress that comes with diabetes.

“It’s been five years since I’ve slept through the night,” Kelly said. “And I think that’s a fear that applies to all of us.”

This story has been updated since its original publication, which contained several errors. Liam Kelly was hospitalized in December for acute appendictis, not as a result of diabetic complications, and the dog at the conference Lisa Kelly first attended grew agitated but did not bark at the speaker, as was previously stated. DADs are trained to nudge or place their paws on their owners as alerts, not to bark. The Gateway apologizes for the errors.