First diabetes-detection dog
- Who
- Armstrong
- What
- First
- Where
- United States
- When
- 2003
The first diabetes-detection dog was Armstrong, a yellow labrador retriever trained in 2003 in California to detect via scent the subtle chemical changes leading to hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar), a condition that if left unchecked can cause a diabetic to slip into a potentially fatal coma. So successful was Armstrong that Dogs for Diabetics (D4D), a charity training diabetes detection dogs, was founded in 2004.