Help Our Daughter Train Her Service Dog

Two years ago, our daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. It's a challenging chronic condition that requires constant management to prevent serious complications. Diabetes is treated with insulin to help keep blood sugar levels from raising too high and leading to hyperglycemia. But, it may also cause blood sugar to drop to unsafe levels and to lead to hypoglycemia, which is equally dangerous as it can cause seizures and coma. Although high blood sugars are bad and untreated will lead to complications, it's the low blood sugars that are particular scary for any parent, because they can happen suddenly and require immediate action.

Keeping blood sugars within normal range is challenging, especially with a growing kid like our daughter who wants to do things like any other kid her age. She is also very active so we have seen more Low's than High's since her diagnosis. Confusion, dizziness, and drowsiness are some of the common symptoms of low blood sugar, but what we struggle with is that she rarely feels she has a low blood sugar until it's already very very low so it usually gives us very short reaction time until it turns into a medical emergency.

Technology that is available these days does help with monitoring, but it does also fail sometimes and we experienced it many times in the last two years, so in the recent months we were researching special service dogs, or diabetic alert dogs. Ever since we shared the idea of getting a service dog with our daughter it became her biggest dream. Diabetic service dogs are trained to let you know when your blood sugar is very high or low so it can save her life. Studies have shown that dogs can be very successful in detecting low blood sugars and alerting their owners so they can treat it quickly.

Training a diabetic service dog takes up to 2 years and it's expensive too. Most of the cost is the personalized classes with a trained professional who will use samples of saliva and sweat to teach her future dog to detect shifts in blood sugars and let her know when she needs to treat them. It is a huge commitment and investment, both timewise and moneywise, but as any parent would agree it may be one of the best investments one can make.

What it means for our daughter is that she will not only have a trusted friend she can spend time with but also a friend who can save her life. For us, parents, it is another level of protection and peace of mind. And although it is not a cure, it may help us prevent those scary situations that we always have on our mind. Other benefits for our daughter include her ability to take part in more physical activities that she loves, greater independence, and improved quality of life.

Here is where we need your help! We are asking for your donations and help raising money to reach our big goal to pay for our daughter's diabetic alert dog's training. It seems like an impossible task right now, but we know we can do it and make her dream a reality.

If you can find it in your hearts and in your budgets to make any donation, big or small, towards our campaign, we will be forever grateful. We will also really appreciate any support so if donation is not something you can make right now, please simply share our campaign on social media. The more people we reach the better chance we have to meet our goal.

If you have made it this far, we truly thank you for taking the time to read our story and for being part of this journey. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out. Once again, thank you in advance for all the support and any amount that you can share as we can use all the help we can get to make this possible.

The Szuberla Family