Double Your Impact: Donate for Warren’s service dog

Please help a 9-year-old Type 1 Diabetic boy with Autism pay for service dog Bumblebee!

Every dollar given here will be used as a matched donation during our in person auction event, meaning donations will be doubled or possibly tripled as well as encourage people at the live event to donate!

Warren is a 9-year old boy who lives in California. He is also a type 1 Diabetic and has been diagnosed with Autism.

Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disease that means Warrens pancreas does not create enough insulin to move the sugar in his bloodstream into his cells (which is what creates energy), leaving high amounts of sugar in his bloodstream- without injection insulin Warren would die.

Because Warren is a diabetic he experiences high and low blood sugars daily. Studies have shown that having a blood sugar over 140 can lead to exponentially higher likelihood of experiencing medical complications such as Diabetic Retinopathy later in life and having a high blood sugar for any length of time can cause him to become sick due to a rise in ketones in his bloodstream leading to lengthy hospital stays (also called DKA). Experiencing low blood sugar levels can lead to him feeling sick or even slipping into a coma or having a seizure and losing consciousness. Unfortunately Warren experiences no symptoms of either high or low blood sugars, which is very scary as the consequences can be deadly!

While Warren is lucky enough to have access to a continuous glucose monitor (CGM or Dexcom) that tells his mom his blood sugar numbers, unfortunately often Warrens Dexcom can stop working, give incorrect blood sugar numbers by large amounts or is slow to alert his mom of high or low blood sugar numbers as well as rapidly rising or falling numbers. Warren also has Autism which means he has no awareness of his body (like being able to feel if his blood sugar is too high or low), is unaware if his Dexcom is alerting (loud beeping) to high or low blood sugar numbers and he is completely unable to do any of his own Diabetic care. While Warren’s mom has worked hard to make up for his pancreas- working to make sure Warren stays in a healthy blood sugar range of 80-140 and closely monitoring his blood sugar 24/7 (including the middle of the night) is a lot of hard work! Luckily, we have found another “tool” that could potentially offer life saving help- a service dog!

Full access service dogs are trained to be able to be with Warren 24/7 including in public areas like stores and alert Warren’s mom when they smell a high or low blood sugar often alerting more accurately and long before his Dexcom indicates any problems with his blood sugar! Besides the obviously potentially life saving alerts a service dog can provide for Warrens blood sugar, a dog can provide comfort and support when Warren feels overwhelmed or overstimulated due to his Autism, which happens often, when Warren is unable to vocalize his feelings or find the tools to deal with his emotions. For example during his many therapies a service dog can sit on Warrens lap and remain calm, providing Warren pressure therapy, a dog to pet (which in itself is calming for him) and constant comfort when he needs it most! For Warren a service dog can be a life saving help on many levels!!

Warren faced many obstacles when looking into a service dog and he found he didn’t qualify to even get on a waiting list for most legitimate organizations due to his age or his cognitive abilities due to his Autism (while Warren wants to help with caring for his service dog, at this time he doesn’t have the capacity to do all the care and training himself), so he almost gave up hope at finding a service dog to help him. Then in January of 2024 Warren’s mom was told about an organization called MD Dogs having a dog finishing training soon, her name was Bumblebee. When Warren’s mom decided to take a look at MD Dogs’ website she was immediately shocked to realize that not only would Warren be allowed to apply for Bee despite all his obstacles (in fact they embraced many of what others would consider his shortcomings!) but every single thing said about Bee was something Warren was looking for in a service dog!! Warren has asked his mom for a service dog for years (he was diagnosed at 3 years old), but he has never been able to apply due to the prohibitive costs and a mismatch of personality to Warren and his family- until they read about Bee! As soon as Warrens mom read about Bee she knew in her heart she would be an absolute perfect match for Warren and his family and everyone including other family and friends agreed.

However, Warrens mom feared fundraising would be difficult as service dogs are expensive and having a service dog meant a lot of extra work and training she would have to provide. For weeks Warren’s mom would read about Bee on the MD Dogs website every day and could feel the pull on her heart to apply for her, but every day tried to talk herself out of applying even though she could potentially be a life saving help. Finally Warrens mom prayed about what she should do and again she felt a strong pull on her heart to apply for Bee, knowing she could possible keep Warren safe, provide comfort and happiness and would be a perfect match for him and his family, so she finally decided she would apply for Bee realizing that it was only a 1% chance Warren would be chosen as a match for Bee.

After continuing to research, Warrens mom found that MD Dogs and trainer Libby were truly a special organization that raised dogs in a loving home environment and put their entire heart and soul into making sure each dog was happy, healthy and trained appropriately in a positive way. Libby ensures each dog is trained to be able to pass a public access service test as well as live alert to blood sugars at least 70% of the time (usually after settling into their new homes her dogs are 90% or more accurate!) and maintains extremely high standards for training and care. MD Dogs offers lifetime support for their dogs, makes sure each dog and handler is properly trained over many hours of transition training and has high expectations for their dogs and trainers before they are allowed to graduate and get their service dog. Additionally, they are a small non profit group and only train a few dogs a year, so they want to ensure the dogs they train are truly ready to become service dogs, their handlers are trained and prepared and the match between dog and handler is done very carefully.

Bee in particular is a special dog! At under 19 pounds, Bee, a field bred English Cocker Spaniel, is a big personality in a small package! Bee is incredibly smart, loves to work and has an extremely high drive to please and get her job done and make her person happy, which means she is very quick to learn anything she is taught and tries to do everything she can to get her job done as fast and well as she possibly can. Bee loves to cuddle and would be happy to sit with Warren as long as he would pet her. Bee also has a high energy level and loves to run around outside and would be happy to play fetch with Warren- this is great as he is recovering from surgery and needs to work on moving around more! Warren is looking forward to joining the dog project in his 4-H group and participating in dog sporting events with Bumblebee! This will be a great opportunity for Warren and his family to do community outreach about service dogs!

we are currently planning to do a fundraiser on 10/13/2024 to pay for Bumblebee but need your help! We are going to use the money raised from this go fund me to create a matching donation at the auction…. This means every dollar that is raised here will be double or possibly even tripled during our in person event! Not only does this mean your generous contribution towards helping Warren will go twice as far (at least), it means it will help people at our auction inspired to help as well!! Any amount is helpful and we appreciate any help and support- including sharing our story!

If you would like more information on our event in Sonoma County, CA please go to https://givebutter.com/c/WarrenandBee

We Are happy to have volunteer help as well as auction item donations ❤️

Please considering following us on Instagram @warren_t1warrior

thank you from the bottom of our hearts!