Eight-year-old Brianna Bertrand is learning to ride a bike this summer at a camp called Lose the Training Wheels. It's a program that teaches people with disabilities to ride a bike.
Brianna has Type 1 diabetes and is autistic. Her mother, Dana, says that her daughter's autism makes it difficult for Brianna to tell people if she is feeling sick from high or low blood sugar.
"She still has a hard time communicating how she feels, so when her blood sugars are low or high she doesn't tell us anything," says Dana.
But Brianna has a new friend helping monitor her diabetes - Cyrus, a diabetic medical alert dog.
Cyrus can smell the drop or rise in Brianna's blood sugar through her breath or skin.
"He'll circle around us. He'll kind of whimper or cry sometimes. Or sometimes he will just stare at us. If he could talk he would say, 'What's going on? Let's check, I'm telling you something is going on.' Then he will go to her, smell her and come back to us," says Dana.
Cyrus is a service dog trained at a program called CARES, Incorporated in Concordia Kansas. The program trains dogs to alert people when a diabetic is in trouble.
That's just what Cyrus did on Monday when he noticed something was wrong with Brianna, according to Sharon Colantonio, a supervisor at Lose the Training Wheels program.
"I went over to talk with mom and Brianna's dog started to whimper and her little brother noticed it. We pulled her off of the floor to check and it turned out her sugar levels were high," says Colantinio.
Brianna has to check her blood four to eight times a day and is finally getting used to the shots after about a year with the diabetes diagnosis.
Cyrus is also trained to sleep in Brianna's room and alert her parents if her blood sugar becomes a problem. When he spots a diabetic reaction and notifies someone, he receives a treat as a reward.
Dana says it cost about $2,500 to get Cyrus and they were on a waiting list for a year. But she says it's all worth it, just knowing that someone else is watching out for Brianna.
