Dog squad
“She’d already learnt Mirandah’s low blood sugar scent.”
Mirandah Wilson was just a toddler when she first became seriously ill. What started out as flu-like symptoms rapidly developed into something far worse, and she ended up in the emergency department of The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, lapsing in and out of consciousness.
“It was the most frightening night of our lives,” says Mirandah’s dad, Derek.
The little girl was diagnosed with unstable Type 1 diabetes, a potentially life-threatening auto-immune condition. The condition can be managed, but it requires constant vigilance because a low blood sugar event can lead to loss of consciousness, seizures or death.
Once she was home, Mirandah’s worried parents were up every three hours at night checking her insulin levels, but it wasn’t long before they were exhausted. Then a family friend suggested they get a medical alert dog.
Derek had worked with explosive detection dogs before, so he already knew that canines had amazing scent receptors in their noses – about 300 million compared to the mere six million in humans. He and wife Anne decided to buy and train an alert dog for Mirandah.
“Koda’s training started at four weeks when she was still with a whole litter of pups,” says Derek. “We sent swab samples
