Jack Keller can’t really carry conversations yet, so his dog Max will do it for him.
Jack, who’s 3 years old, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes right after his second birthday. Since Jack is so young, his parents, Greg Keller, 30, and Ashley Keller, 27, can’t rely on Jack to communicate when his blood sugar is too low (hypoglycemia) or too high (hyperglycemia), so they got a dog to do it for him.
The Kalama family, which includes Jack’s brothers Hunter, 5, and Wesley, 1, welcomed Max, a yellow Labrador retriever, into the family last month. Max was trained by Diabetic Alert Dogs of America.
“Communication isn’t fully there with 2-year-olds so just to have an extra set of eyes and a nose on Jack was something that everybody says, ‘Oh, my God. You have to do this,'” Ashley Keller said. “He doesn’t replace us taking care of our kid in any shape or form, but having him with Jack always, when he’s at school or any of that stuff, is going to be a huge comfort.”
According to the Diabetic Alert Dogs of America website, the organic chemicals in human bodies emit certain odors. Low and high blood sugar levels, in particular, release chemicals that have distinct odors, which humans can’t notice, but dogs can detect. The Diabetic Alert Dogs of America training prepares dogs to alert owners when those odors are smelled.
The healthy blood sugar range for Jack is 80 to 150, Greg Keller said. The family has frozen Jack’s saliva on cotton balls during times when his blood sugar was too low or two high. They’ll use the cotton balls to keep Max sharp by playing scent games with Max for his first 30 to 90 days with the family.
If Max sniffs a cotton ball that is out of range he will go find one of Jack’s parents and paw at them, which is Max’s way of saying, “Hey, something is not right. Check on him,” as Ashley Keller puts it.
Max can detect blood sugar spikes or drops about 15 to 20 minutes before they register on his blood sugar test kit.
“He’s actually able to pick up those smells before technology,” Ashley Keller said.
Once, when Jack was napping, his dad checked on him and discovered that Jack’s blood sugar was in the low 30s. Jack was unresponsive, so Greg Keller went to grab glucagon and a juice box. When Greg Keller returned, Jack was still unresponsive. Greg Keller asked Jack if he wanted the drink, and Jack shot right up and drank the juice. The child was fine.
The family doesn’t always check Jack’s blood sugar during naps, and that was an instance when Max would have been helpful.
“That would have been something where if we had Max he would have picked up on it, and before it got to the point where it was that low and dangerous,” Ashley Keller said.
The family raised $15,000 to buy Max. Ashley Keller works in a Vancouver dental office, while her husband works for BNSF Railway. The couple are from Vancouver and went to Skyview High School. Most of the money to buy Max was raised in Clark County. They held donation-based yard sales in Vancouver and Ridgefield and used a Go Fund Me to purchase Max.
“Without the community, we wouldn’t be doing this,” Ashley Keller said.
Jack is “still getting used to having a nose up in his business,” Ashley Keller joked, but the two are becoming close friends. Max has been trained in a way that he can help other diabetics when he’s out in public if their blood sugar reaches dangerous levels.
“In the long run, maybe he can even save someone else’s life,” Ashley Keller said.
