Service Dog Alerts Parents There Was Something Wrong With Their Daughter

A medical alert dog sprang into action one night after falling asleep with her human companion and later noticing something was off.

Spy is a yellow Labrador service dog who looks after a little girl with Type 1 diabetes. She is trained to sniff out the girl's high and low blood sugar levels.

One night, the girl's parents were downstairs after she and Spy went to bed. But after a while Spy came to them, tail wagging with urgency. She was alerting them that something was wrong with their daughter.

The caption reads: "The nose ALWAYS knows! Even when it's sleeping."

The parents rushed upstairs, along with Spy, to get a blood sugar reading. The girl's Dexcom, which is a glucose monitoring system, was still warming up so they were not able to get the reading right away.

They had given her insulin and did a pump change only an hour earlier, but the parents still listened to Spy because she knew something was not right. As it turned out, the reading was very high.

The dog's amazing alert was captured and posted to the TikTok account @ouronederfullboggslife on Wednesday. Within two days, the clip reached over 9.3 million views and 1.3 million likes.

"Dogs are freaking amazing. My medical alert dog has saved my life numerous times, I don't know where I'd be without him," one viewer commented.

The text on the video reads: "This dog is such a blessing to our family! We truly can't be more thankful.

Newsweek reached out to the owners via email for comment.

Diabetic Alert Dogs

Dogs' sense of smell is about 10,000 to 100,000 times better than a human's. Because of this, they can work as blood sugar level detectors for humans with diabetes. But how?

Low and high sugar levels release chemicals into the body that have distinctive smells. Only dogs can detect these odors. Diabetic-alert dogs are trained to sense the change in a person's breath or sweat, according to the American Kennel Club.

If the odor is detected, the dog will alert that person or someone else with pawing, licking, vocalizing or sometimes even grabbing the blood glucose meter. They will do this before the blood sugar levels reach dangerous levels.

However, these diabetic alert dogs are not meant to replace monitors. They are simply there to assist, which provides their human companions, and family members, a sense of security.

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