Belfast woman praises 'life saving' Hypo Hounds

A Belfast woman with Type 1 diabetes is praising her 'life saving' Labrador for giving her back some independence.

Hypo Hounds is a charity which trains dogs to detect the dangerous changes to their owner’s blood sugars and alert them before they go into ‘hypo’.

The charity says approximately 400,000 people are currently living with Type 1 Diabetes in the UK, including around 29,000 children.

A person with Diabetes will measure their blood glucose over 80,000 times in their life.

A hypoglycaemic attack - or hypo - is when your blood sugar level drops too low - and it can be life threatening.

Wendy Smith lives with Type 1 Diabetes. However, she lost the ability to detect when her blood sugar levels were dipping years ago. This meant she would go into ‘hypo’ with no warning or chance to stop it. Her condition suddenly became very difficult to live with.

The Belfast woman, who is originally from Coleraine, spoke to Downtown/CoolFM exclusively.

She told us how scary potentially life-threatening hypoglycaemic attacks can really be: “The worst for me, was one day I dropped my husband and my daughter off at a local community centre… it would’ve taken me five minutes to get home, and an hour and a half later I was in Tesco… with no memory of how I got there and my bloods really low.”

“I had staggered into that shop, driven my car, from east Belfast to Newtownbreda. What way? I have no idea. I could’ve killed somebody; I could’ve killed myself. It doesn’t even bare thinking about.”

The 56-year-old was first introduced to the ‘lifesaving’ dogs when one approached her in public. Its owner asked her if she was diabetic, as the dog was trained to detect low blood sugars. Since then, she became involved with the dogs. She learned about Hypo Hound charity, and got one of her own, called Echo.

The dogs are trained using breath samples of their soon to be owner. Wendy would send a breath sample – of when her levels were low - off to the charity. The pets use it to train, so it can sense when their owner needs alerted.

Echo has since retired, so Digby, a black labrador now looks out for Wendy: “I can fix myself before I get to a level where I need third party help. The independence, the control it gives you back... They literally are life savers. In the first 60 days that I had Digby, he alerted me 138 times.”

“They give me that minute, to sit down, have an orange juice or a biscuit. Do whatever it takes to keep my bloods level so I can continue. When you go low it can take you 45 minutes to recover again, but I don’t even need that recovery time, because I catch myself, just before I get to the period where I am low.”

Mrs Smith went onto say that it really takes the pressure off the family, and her colleagues and friends who have previously had to be on stand-by in case she went low.

She says Hypo Hounds are invaluable: “The charity, overall since it started in 2016, has trained 54 dogs. Not one person who has a dog has had a hospital admission due to their diabetes which I think is unbelievable. They’re life savers… they’re invaluable.”

Wendy is encouraging anyone who wants to learn more to get in touch with her: wendysmith@hypohounds.co.uk

You can also learn more about Hypo Hounds via their website: https://hypohounds.co.uk/

Hear more about this story at the top of the hour in our new bulletins: https://hellorayo.co.uk/cool-fm/