Hi! I am Alissa and I have Type 1 Diabetes (T1D). I was diagnosed in October 2014, just a few weeks after my 6th birthday. Since my diagnosis I've gone on an insulin pump (Omnipod) and a continuous glucose monitoring system (CGM/Dexcom) and those technologies really help my parents and other caregivers to manage my T1D.

Although technology is wonderful, it is never 100% reliable. That is why we have decided to add a diabetes alert dog (DAD) to our family and toolkit for my T1D management!

We can't afford a "finished dog" (one that has been fully trained as a service dog) because they run upwards of $30,000! Instead we have decided to get a "scent-imprinted" puppy (one that has been exposed to MY low and high blood sugars since she was just a few days old!). My mommy is going to train our DAD herself along with the help of other trainers.

Please help us raise funds for our scent-imprinted puppy and initial training. We have found a very respectable breeder who breeds miniature poodles. Mommy did a lot of research and learned that poodles are natural diabetes alerters! I am getting a miniature (that will weigh less than 20 pounds full grown) so it will be easier for me to handle when we go in public, to school and so on. The great thing about DADs is that they can be trained to wake you up (or your mommy!) when you have dangerous low blood sugars at night. I have had some scary lows and I don't want to go to the hospital ever again! Nothing in T1D management is perfect, but we hope that a DAD will help us even more along with the super cool technology that I use.

Thank you for reading my story and for helping me raise funds for my DAD. 

Love,
Alissa