Diabetic Alert Dogs are our PASSION and our CALLING! Our motto is “Where a dog’s nose saves a life and embraces a heart!” We get it because we also LIVE DAILY WITH THIS DISEASE!  

Personally, I was a dog trainer long before I became a diabetic.  I eat, breathe, and live with diabetes and dogs every day of my life.  I know what it is like have 26 dogs alert on you at the same time, it is VERY NOISY AND VERY ANNOYING!

One of our many specialties is finding the RIGHT DOG for you!  Through the application, phone calls, and visits we learn to know WHO you are, WHAT your life is like, your strengths & weaknesses, and WHY you think a diabetic alert dog is right for you.  We hope to guide you to making the right decision whether or not you end up with a diabetic alert dog!  It may or may not be the right tool for you and your family! 

How a Diabetic Alert Dog works DEPENDS A LOT ON YOU!  You must have a STRONG DESIRE to own a Diabetic Alert Dog, truly LIKE and ENJOY dogs and work hard daily on managing your diabetes.  A DAD is not ideal for every diabetic. A Diabetic Alert Dog will not work if you only have the DESIRE to have a diabetic alert dog; you must also truly NEED a diabetic alert dog.  This means you must be AGGESSIVE in your attempts to control your blood glucose levels & work closely with your medical professional team. Yet despite all of your efforts, you may still have dangerous unexplained low and high blood glucose numbers.

So what does an IDEAL HOME for one of our Diabetic Alert Dogs look like?   

An ideal candidate:

-MUST LOVE dogs

-MUST be insulin dependent  

-MUST be able to meet the needs of the dog.

All dogs have PHYSICAL, EMOTIONAL, and EDUCATIONAL NEEDS.  These dogs SAVE YOUR LIFE and DESERVE the best attention and care we have to offer. The estimated yearly expenses for maintaining a service dog are $1000 (depends on the area of the country you live in)

-Must provide adequate living accommodations. The home should be a loving, stable home.

-Must enjoy interacting with dogs

-Must have made aggressive attempts to control Blood Glucose levels and be under the supervision & advisement of a medical team. The diabetic should be monitoring and documenting their blood sugar levels.

-Must make a long-term commitment to maintaining the partnership with the DAD and with the Tattle Tail trainers.

-Must commit to maintaining contact with us after the dog is placed.

-Must be able to demonstrate the ability to be a responsible DAD handler in multiple environments

-Must demonstrate commitment to training and learning about dogs and diabetes!

We are very different from other diabetic alert agencies because many of us are T1 and have our own personal Diabetic Alert Dogs.  As dog trainers we have combined knowledge and experience of over 75 years which covers many different venues from service dogs, hunting dogs (including hunt tests and field trials), agility training, obedience training, rally training, therapy dogs, tracking, and many other venues.  We also have a licensed Certified Diabetic Educator and Nutritionist who works closely with us.  She has been a T1 for over 35 years herself and understands personally the issues that go with diabetes and these dogs! 

When you obtain a Tattle Tail dog or puppy; you not only get all of our years of experience as dog trainers, you also get our years of experience lived successfully with this disease.  We want you to understand while we are about the dogs; we have to address all issues holistically in order to help you succeed.

At this point we want to stress to you while the benefits of having a Diabetic Alert Dog are immense there is a downside as well. You will gain a friend, a companion, and an early warning system that can make living with diabetes a little easier but at the same time it can present many difficult challenges.  Challenges at this point you have not even considered!  Challenges like ongoing training (there is no such thing as a fully finished dog…it is constant and ongoing), alerting when you don’t want to be alerted, alerting that wont stop (sometimes you can not do enough to either drop or raise your blood glucose fast enough), public access situations (always being stared at, getting questions, having to hear about someone’s great uncle who had both legs amputated because of diabetes, hearing every “cure” for diabetes out there…”you know if you drink vinegar once a day you wont have diabetes anymore”).  There are also the small things like how do you carry not only all of your diabetic supplies but the supplies needed for your Diabetic Alert Dog.  These are just a FEW of the many additional things you have to consider.

A Diabetic Alert Dog is HARD WORK!!  When you are dealing with a difficult disease that plain and simple does not play fair, it can seem not only overwhelming but also utterly impossible.  ARE YOU READY FOR ALL OF THIS?????  

It sounds like we don’t want you to have one of our dogs doesn’t it?  NOT TRUE, but we want you to go into this with your eyes WIDE OPEN!