You get TWO posts from me today. 🙂 I didn’t have time yesterday to dive into the Diabetes Art prompt because I was busy dancing, volunteering and being thoroughly entertained by my teachers and their fellow pros hamming it up during contest time. (Listening to the entire ballroom sing along to Sweet Caroline was priceless.)

Anyway, I’m using today to explore one of the wild card prompts.

What is the ideal diabetes service animal? Think beyond the obvious and be creative in explaining why your choice is a good one. For example, maybe a seal would make a good service animal – it flaps its flippers and barks every time you get a good blood sugar reading!

This topic interested me because I actually wanted to sign up to train service dogs for PWDs at some point. I then realized how EXPENSIVE it is to train a service dog and quickly got that idea out of my head. But what better way to train a PWD dog than with an actual PWD? Anyway, the point is to imagine your ideal service animal.

I love small animals. My hubs spends afternoons sending me “Aww” photos from Reddit, usually containing images of bunnies, kittens, turtles and penguins. Sometimes a giraffe. I’d accept any of these choices as a service animal. (Though – a giraffe might prove to be impractical.)

Think about it – all four animals could be useful in diabetes care. Turtles could stay in their shells for most of the time, but if your blood sugar is rising slowly because of a fatty meal, it could start to walk across the room… well, slowly. Kittens are great at running around aimlessly around the house at high speed. This would be great to remind someone to exercise or give their diabetes care special attention today. Bunnies are generally calm, but have a tendency to chew on things. When they start chewing, maybe it means that their is a gnawing problem at hand, such as a sticky high or a pending low. And penguins are a good alert system – they can flap their wings and squeak when there is a problem… which can’t be any more annoying than my CGM alarms, right?

See? Wouldn’t you want this menagerie for your diabetes care as well?