work like a dog
Meet the
Shaheen Team & Their Coach By Nancy Dewar
Imagine, as a parent, getting up a few times in the middle of the night for five years to check your child’s blood glucose levels…to keep them alive. That was Portsmouth resident Stefany Shaheen’s life after her oldest child Elle was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of 8. And that was her amazingly brave and resilient daughter’s life too. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the body's immune system destroys the cells that release insulin, eventually eliminating insulin production from the body. Without insulin, cells cannot absorb sugar (glucose), which they need to produce energy. Blood sugar levels need to be tested constantly to ensure safe and healthy ranges. Though great advances have been made since Elle was diagnosed, initially this meant pricking her finger 10-12 times a day to test her blood sugar levels and taking 8-10 shots of insulin every day.
Stefany explained, “It was a constant day to day challenge in the early days. Dangerously low blood sugars can cause seizures which ultimately can lead to death and high blood sugars over time can cause various types of organ damage and can also be fatal. We had to figure out how to keep Elle safe and help her live her best life with the disease.” Stefany and Elle never imagined that it would be a dog, a wonderful yellow Labrador…that would change their lives!
The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s ‘Children’s Congress’ is a national event with members of Congress. It brings 150 young people from across the country to share with members of Congress what it’s like to live with diabetes and to advocate for medical research funding. Elle and Stefany co-chaired the event in 2011. It was at this event they saw a little girl with a Golden Retriever. Surrounded by 150 kids and 200+ proud parents, Stefany saw this dog get up and circle the little girl while scanning the room for her parents. It turns out that the girl was experiencing a low blood sugar. This Golden was a diabetic alert dog who alerted the Shaheen family that help may come in an unconventional form. “We left Children’s Congress and started researching more about these dogs. I was skeptical. Here we are working so hard every day trying to keep Elle
healthy, and it was a struggle. How on earth is a dog going to make this work?”
Extensive research led the Shaheen family to CARES (Canine Assistance Rehabilitation Education & Services), a non-profit in Kansas. Costs for a service dog through private trainers can be very expensive; $10,000-$15.000, but not through CARES. CARES dogs and puppies are donated from bloodlines that have been successful service dogs. Once accepted as a service dog, the puppies are placed with a volunteer foster family where they live for several months to learn basic obedience and socialization. CARES also partners with regional prisons for fostering and obedience training. CARES teaches the inmates how to do the basic training of the dogs, which is another big savings. It also is a big gift to these inmates who form loving bonds with their temporary charges; giving them a great sense of purpose. Upon completion of basic training, the dogs go back to CARES for 3 months to learn specific skills needed for their upcoming work. Depending on the dog’s abilities, CARES assigns them to seizure alert, diabetes alert or PTSD specialties. After a long 18 months of waiting, the Shaheen’s received a call in January 2013. They were getting a yellow Lab named Coach…finally! Elle and her dad Craig headed to Kansas
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in March to meet Coach and complete public access training. Coach already had about 2,000 hours of training with his first trainer and companion from the Ellsworth Correctional Facility. After a week of one-on-one training (including staying together 24/7) and completing a public access test, Elle and Coach returned to New Hampshire as a licensed service dog team. Stefany shared an amazing story about how remarkably smart these dogs are. “Their first night together in the hotel with Coach, the dog knocked a backpack off a table to wake Craig up, as Elle’s blood sugar was low. This was before they had done any training together, and Coach did not yet have any established signals to alert, but he found a way.”
The connection between Elle and Coach was instantaneous. Though he knows Elle is his charge, he also has adapted to all family members, alleviating one of Stefany’s concerns. “With four children, we also needed a dog who could become part of the family or it wasn’t going to work.” Stefany had another big concern. “Elle had always been a live-out-loud kid; never defined by diabetes. She was known as a great student, a lover of theater and acting. What I feared most when she got Coach…with a dog always by her side…would she become defined by the disease instead of who she is? Will she always be known as the girl with the dog?”
