Here is a email from Australia that just came from the lady whose daughter needs a dog:

Hi Ed, thank you for such great feedback.
The reason we were placed with a hairless crested was because there is a chance he might go to school with her next year. Australia unfortunately leads in allergies, whether it be foods, pollens or animals, so the hairlessness breed was very appealing and the school preferred this. Also the bloodline where my cresty comes from is already successful in detecting with about 8 registered alerting dogs. As for the pup, he is quite clever and very obedient. I am a dog trainer by profession and work for myself but with the philosophy of Delta Society which you may know of. It is all positive and with clickers.
Also, many seemed concerned about inducing low sugars. There is no need for that. The body begins to excrete sugar in the urine, sweat and breath the moment the patient's levels rise above 8mmol. so what we are trying to do is get the dog to detect when the smell of sugar on the breath disappears, meaning they patient is not low but coming down instead. The idea is to get the dog to detect the shift in the smell rather than wait for dangerously low blood sugars. I hope that relaxes some of thoise on the forum. I would hate to think they thought I would jeopardise my daughter's health to train a dog.
I will keep checking it as there are some great ideas and info on there. Again thanks a lot. And maybe this is an area you could look into. You have no idea how it can help us parents with diabetic children.
Chiara

That's great to hear...Chiara, I hope you can share your training methods in some detail. I'd love to hear about them. To your point, there are a ton of parents with diabetic children who would benefit from safe ways to train a service dog to help their kids.

8mmol converts to around 150 mg/dl, correct? Chiara, please send me an email, curious to know what actions you'd expect people to take once your child hits that level. Not being critical, just curious. That would be a relatively normal reading for most diabetics (and most people as they digest meals)...wondering what actions you'd want taken at that point, as a parent.

Hi Woody, yes 8mmol is quite normal here too and we would do nothing. What I often do, however, is keep a close eye on my daughter as she has been known to go from 8mmol to 3 in 20 minutes. I also tend to frequently ask her if she needs food. I guess the idea is for the dog to let the child know that they are close to coming down and to be aware of that. I am going to try to get him to detect when she does hit the normal range and as you would know, there is not much room to move in once you are there. Maybe this way she would keep in touch with her body and what it is doing and act on it before getting to the hypo state.
Also I realise most of you have issues wuth the breed, but he does have a blooline which is already detecting. The other reason is also the no hair thing, less chance for allergies in the classroom, and also he is small enough to tuck away. The breed in known to be very sensitive and overly attach and with hypo alert dogs, that is sort of what we are after, a dog which is very attentive to its owner and sensitive to changes at the same time. Sounds good in theory, lets hope it works. Thanks for you input, will keep you all posted.
Chiara

Good luck!