Many of you know that back in 2011 we were excited to begin raising money to pay for a Diabetic Alert Dog for Gracie.... and everyone was so generous with their support, encouragement, and donations, which we were so incredibly thankful for. November 11, 2011, Max arrived at our home to much hoopla and excitement. Sadly, it was during his delivery that there began to be a little apprehension about things. Honestly, I've been embarrassed to tell our entire story, because getting scammed truly makes you feel stupid... but enough time has passed that I'm ready to share our story. Grab a cup of your favorite beverage, curl up in your most comfy chair, and get ready to read our journey with Max William the (not so) wonder dog.
Gracie has always been a brittle diabetic, with blood sugar swings that would make a monkey envious. Back in 2010-2011 I began seeing a few Facebook friends talking about Diabetic Alert Dogs (DADs) and all the wonderful things they do for their person. Things like alert to changing BGs, getting test kits and juice boxes, even calling 911 in case their person became unable to respond. A few friends had even gotten these dogs for their sweet Type 1 kiddos and things seemed to be going exceptionally well. One thing I noticed was that they all were getting them from the same organization, so I started asking questions and doing some deep research to see what I could learn. My first thought was that maybe we could train one of our dogs to do this important work, but there just wasn't much info available at the time into how to go about that. What info was available was really vague with only a couple of specifics at best.
By summer of 2011 Craig and I had some long discussions about pursuing this for Gracie. It seemed like a perfect answer. Type 1 is a life threatening disease; one in which life can be snatched away quickly and quietly.... our biggest fear is going in to check on Gracie (and now Sarah too) in the middle of the night, only to find that she slipped away. With a DAD to partner with us, the chance of that happening was pretty slim....or so we thought. In 2011, Diabetic Alert Dogs were pretty new on the scene of service dogs; certainly not mainstream, but heading that direction. All our research led back to the same Virginia based company as being "the best of the best". Unbeknownst to us, although they'd been around for many years, they'd only been in the service dog world for less than an handful of years. We spoke directly with the owner, in-depth, many times before deciding to jump in. And jump in we did. We worked fast to secure donations so that we could be placed on the active list and have a dog placed with Gracie asap... We were told that they were partnering with JDRF and were being featured in the upcoming FALL edition of the JDRF newsletter coming out that October (sadly, that was not true. JDRF never partnered with them or featured them in any newsletter), so if we didn't want to be placed on a long waiting list, we'd better get our $1000 in to be active asap. I received an email on Halloween stating that a male yellow lab had been chosen for Gracie. We took her out the next day for a special lunch to tell her the WONDERFUL NEWS. Her Max William would be delivered on Veterans day... less than 2 weeks away.
Fast foreward to the day Max arrived. The trainer arrives with an adorable 13 week old yellow lab.....who had never been on a leash until he was at the airport, didn't know his name, knew not a single basic command, and didn't even seem to know how to eat puppy kibble. We were expecting a puppy, yes; but one that had already been introduced to scent work for diabetes, had at least a beginning basic idea of the commands "sit, stay, down, come, heel, etc". It became very apparent from the first moment that Max had received ZERO socialization or training, and when I asked the trainer about it, he apologized and said they'd been so swamped with deliveries that Max and his entire litter had slipped through the cracks and not received their "fast track training". Hhhmmmmm.....Red Flags started to raise. The next day was spent doing local PR work for the organization. Having our local fire dept come to the house to meet Max and learn about his mission with Gracie, doing interviews with the local newspaper and TV News, and working with Max to get him to actually walk on a leash (not lay down as soon as it was clipped to his collar). By the third day, the last day our trainer was to be with us, we were presented with a 30+ page contract and told that we must sign it or Max would be taken back to Virginia with the trainer and the money we'd fundraised for to that point would be forfeited. We questioned several things in the contract, but weren't allowed the time to have an attorney read it over and advise us..... so yes, we accepted the answers of "don't worry about it, it's totally legit and is for your protection", as we looked at our precious daughter with her "life saving" pup that had spent the past 3 days bonding, and we signed. We were consoled by the fact that I knew a few people that had these pups and things "seemed" to be going ok for them. I was unaware of the shifts and fallout going on behind the scenes at the organization itself at the time.
We worked round the clock with Max, training him as we were told to do. We weren't getting any "trained" alerts, but were told that his hiccups, chewing things up, scratching incessantly, barking, whining, even throwing up and digging were all alerts. We would test and Gracie would be out of range (no big surprise there, since she was ALWAYS out of range, hence our commitment to getting a service dog). We would praise Max and give him gourmet treats as a reward.... and the naughty puppy behavior was reinforced and rewarded. All the while, Gracie's BG was showing no improvement. We accepted what we were told.... how were we to know any different? They were the experts, right? So when Max literally ate our sofa and we were told that it was because we missed his alert even though Gracie was actually in range when we checked, we hung our heads and accepted it. When Gracie would crash into the 40s while Max was sleeping soundly, we accepted that we must have missed his alert. And, when Gracie would be outside playing and Max would be obnoxious in the house (barking, chewing up toys to shreds, pottying in the family room) we would accept that he "must be alerting" rather than a pup/dog that just wanted to be outside playing, and we would call her in to test ~ sometimes she'd be out of range and other times she'd be just fine. By the time our trainer came back, for an afternoon one day and a morning the next, I asked about "trained" alerts. What he showed me to do to train Max made sense so we diligently instituted his technique. Of course all it was to Max was a trick to get treats.... he just never seemed to actually be ALERTING. We went months and months without any training whatsoever. Our original trainer left the organization without a word and we went months without any trainer to connect with. They finally assigned us to another trainer who pretty much only asked that we email him alert/behavior reports weekly otherwise wasn't in contact with us past his introductory call to "get to know Max"
November 11, 2012, exactly one year to the day that Max joined our family... he had a grand mal seizure. By March, he began having more grand mal and cluster seizures and was diagnosed with Epilepsy. When we immediately notified the organization, we were told they'd never had this happen before, EVER. They said they'd be in touch with us in a day or so to let us know what their vet had to say, while we were vetting Max with our own family vet. We never heard back from them other than courteous response when I'd update them on how Max was recovering. By this time we were finding out more and more about the organization; hearing from others of their bad experiences, all the while staying quiet and trying not to rock the boat. We were still fundraising to pay off Max. The organization was suppose to help us fundraise, but never followed through. We even ask that they send bracelets that they had made available for people to sell (sell for $5 each, organization would've kept $1 for their cost and $4 would've gone to our fundraising account)... they never sent them after numerous requests to do so. Same with calendars. It was about that time we learned that they had never filed as a non-profit in the state of Nebraska and we couldn't continue to fundraise for them here. We didn't really know what to do. We now have a dog with epilepsy, that could not even have a hope of being trained to alert to Gracie, we couldn't continue to fundraise to pay off our contract, and we were hearing of so many other families being sued by the organization because they found themselves with similar circumstances as us. We took notice that it seemed most of the dogs the organization was placing had health issues... and contrary to what we were told with Max, there were a few that suffered with seizures. One of Max's litter mates died from cancer at about 3 years old. This was not the norm for service dogs. It's why most reputable organizations don't place puppies into service. Yes, what we were told about the logic of the pup growing up with it's person, had made sense at the time because we didn't know any better. But now we did..... service dogs need a full 2 years training to be sure there aren't health or temperament problems that can prevent them from doing their job. For instance, Max is high strung and nervous~he is scared of loud noises (the fourth of July fireworks or a good thunderstorm will send him into hysterics), he gets scared walking if a loud vehicle passes by. This is not something he can outgrow or gain control of... it is just how he is geared. And, that is not workable for a service dog who needs to be confident and calm in every situation his handler puts him in. These traits, along with his epilepsy, would've knocked him out of any reputable service dog training program. It doesn't make him a bad dog, it just makes him unsuitable for service work. He is an awesome family dog and we love him, but he is unreliable as a service dog.
A little over a year into this journey, we were served with a lawsuit by the organization. They were suing several families and we were one in that group. We chose to hire a Virginia attorney and fight for Max. Not surprising, the organization decided to drop that suit.....only to pick it up again later in another Virginia county, and yes, drop it again when they saw we would fight it. AND THEN.... we were served with papers that they were picking it back up here in Lincoln. They wanted us to pay off the contract, even though they had broken their own contract from before they delivered Max to our home, but they also filed a separate suit to get Max returned to them. Max.... a 4 year old, non-trained dog with epilepsy. There was no way we were going to let that happen. First off, we adore our boy, even though he causes major migraines for us. Beyond that, we couldn't let him go to another family, knowing full well that he was not, nor could be, a service dog. Knowing that, we also knew that he'd most likely be put down if we lost. We were ready to fight for our boy.... and a FIGHT is truly was. We went to trial, something we've never been involved with before and knew nothing of what to expect. We answered questions honestly and endured being put down and bashed by the opposing attorney. It was a long and exhausting day, and we went home not knowing what would happen. A few weeks later, we got our judgement and we won. The court had found them to be guilty of fraudulent business practices. Of course they appealed, but we won that as well. Our judgement was with prejudice, meaning they can not sue us again. Max was safe with us, his family, and we were able to walk away from this dreadful experience once and for all.
Why am I telling our story now? Because, while there are Diabetic Alert Dogs that do indeed work well and save their person's life by their well-trained heroic actions, that is not always the case. Placing untrained $20,000+ puppies in homes with medically fragile children is irresponsible and can cause devastating problems. Families that need service dogs are already vulnerable, and business practices like the ones we dealt with from the organization Max came from is nothing short of preying on the vulnerable. Service dogs offer a better quality of life for so many..... passing dogs off as service dogs, who are NOT fully vetted and trained to do their service, only causes harm to all involved. Many will think that we, and everyone like us, were stupid to be so duped into signing a contract in the first place. That's a bitter pill to swallow, when all we were doing was trying to make life for our daughter the best it could be by giving her a partner to help her wth the hardships her life entails. Believe it or not, we did our research; we did everything you're told to do before making any kind of contractual/business commitment. For us, however, the organization, as well as the service itself, was too new at the time to have much of a track record that would be negative. We had no way of knowing that what they were telling us was their "proprietary training techniques" was nothing but a bunch of hooey.... after all, they were the experts, or so we thought. We truly had reasonable expectations of what we were walking into. We expected a puppy who was already "imprinted" to start alerting to fluctuating blood sugars from the start, who already had some training in basic obedience, who was already under training to alert to out of range blood sugars with a trained signal (a paw or a bow, for example), who was started on house breaking and kennel training but still might have an occasional accident. What we got was a puppy who'd never been handled much before his plane ride from Virginia to Nebraska, who was not scent imprinted as we'd been told he was from the moment of his birth, who didn't know what a leash clipped to his collar even felt like, who had never even heard his name before arriving at our door, and who had never even heard a basic command given in his entire life let along hadn't been trained to actually give an alert. We got a puppy who was an adorable, soft puppy with a coal black button nose, who was not capable of doing the service for which he was delivered to do.... a near $20,000 chewing and barking machine with no inclination or ability to alert to Gracie's blood sugars. Do I believe in Diabetic Alert Dogs? Yes, I believe there are some amazing DADs out there, but I don't necessarily believe that is the norm. Frankly, I believe that a Continuous Glucose Monitor is a much better and more accurate option that will lead to a longer and healthier life for diabetics. If down the road they need physical assistance, then at that point I would consider another service dog, but not as a front line of defense.
Finally, may I say, even though Max does not fill the service he was suppose to do, he still offers Gracie comfort from the daily struggles of living with T1D. He also offers her a mission of her own; that of his caregiver since he has his own special needs. Would we do it all over again, knowing what we now know? Of course not! But that doesn't change our love for Max William, the dog that acted as an alarm clock and caused us to test Gracie about 15-18 times a day. He may have only wanted his treats and knew that bad behavior garnered them, but it did train Gracie to start to test herself and not solely rely on Mom and Dad to do ;)
Please take the time to watch the Dr Phil episode I posted at the top of this. Learn how the best of intentions can go horribly wrong when you choose the wrong service dog organization. Yes, it shows both sides of things in that episode, but that only goes to prove that there are indeed two sides to this issue and not everything comes out smelling like roses.
And on a final note....Max is very happily living life as one of the pack with his brother Brody and Sisters Felicity and Annie. He is "just a dog" living a spoiled dog's life, enjoying romping with his brother the most of all :)
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