HOLLY POND, Ala. – A Holly Pond family is raising funds for a Diabetic Alert Dog. Cash Howard, 7, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes on Sept. 26, 2021. He has experienced many changes, but his mom Sarai Rasco Howard said he has been very brave throughout the last year.
She said the week her son was diagnosed, the family had been on vacation, and she noticed that he seemed more withdrawn and “zoned out” than normal. “He normally is the kid that loves to laugh, cut up and play jokes on people. I noticed on this trip he wasn’t doing any of those things. I also noticed that he was drinking constantly and peeing a lot. Most people wouldn’t think much of it but having two nieces with type 1, I knew these were signs of diabetes.”
His symptoms continued to worsen on the trip home. The family got his sugar checked at a neighboring first responder’s house, and it was so high, the meter would not read the glucose level.
Howard took her son straight to Children’s of Alabama, where they learned his sugar was an extremely high 614. The condition was caught early, and thankfully he had not reached diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), which can be life threatening.
Said Howard, “It’s now been a little over a year and Cash has handled it all so well. He was thrown a curve ball in his life, but I couldn’t have asked for a better response from him. He handles it like a champ every day. He is a true superhero, and he inspires me every day. He has countless finger sticks a day and anywhere from 5-8 shots a day so of course he gets tired of all the sugar checks, shots and just the extra time that’s involved with it all, but he doesn’t ever give a hard time about it all.”
Shortly after her son was diagnosed, Howard came across Diabetic Alert Dogs (DADS), but said, “When I looked more into it and saw the cost of getting one trained it scared me away.”
Cash Howard wears a continuous glucose monitor that is supposed to alert when a wearer’s blood glucose gets too high or too low, but his mom learned it doesn’t always give accurate alerts.
“It’s set to go off once he drops to 80, but one night it didn’t. It was around midnight; Cash was asleep, and his alarm went off. I checked and it was showing 40. My first thought was there’s no way this can be right and I thought maybe it was a compression low,” she said. “I got out his blood meter testing kit and checked his blood and it said 38. My heart dropped and I started to panic. This is the lowest he had ever been.”
She said she was able to raise her son’s blood sugar but was shaken by the event and decided she wanted to take every possible precaution. “I started thinking what if his alarm never went off or what if I didn’t hear it. Of course, the tears came as I laid beside him and watched him while he was still asleep, and he had no idea as to what all just happened, and that is the moment I said to myself I don’t care what it takes, I am going to pursue getting Cash a Diabetic Alert Dog.”
The Howards are working with Kim Johnson, a trainer from Chattanooga, Tennessee, who paired their son with black labradoodle Luna in August. “She paired Cash with a pup named Luna and the two had an instant bond. It made my momma heart so happy when I saw the look on Cash’s face when Luna came running around the corner to Cash.”
Luna is still being scent-trained to detect Cash Howard’s sugar levels, his mom said. “Your body produces a chemical when your sugar drops low and produces a chemical when your sugar is rising high. Luna will be able to smell the chemical changes and alert Cash 30 minutes before it’s actually about to happen and can pick up the smell up to a mile away! These alert dogs are incredible.”
Luna will be a member of the family’s diabetic team and will also be able to join Cash Howard when he plays outside. “He is a 7-year-old active boy, and he stays outside riding his bike, climbing trees, building forts, walking trails in the woods and anything else you can imagine that would be fun to a little boy. In order for his monitor to work, he has to carry around a receiver that has to be within a few feet of him at all times, otherwise the alarm won’t pick him up, but most of the time he will leave it at home while he goes on adventures outside,” his mom said.
Luna has been assigned to go to the Howards when she finishes training in the spring, but the family is still raising money for her. Fundraising efforts began in September and the family has been overwhelmed with support.
“We are blessed to live in a community where small local business were willing to donate gift cards, passes to their entertainment parks, local Lions Club members doing fundraisers, churches donating and my brother for donating one-quarter beef for a raffle from Rasco Cattle Co. I also had people to reach out to me and wanted to help sell tickets; my mom was a huge help in getting those tickets sold. We are very close to our goal. We are about $1,600 away from our $18,000 goal!”
Howard has a few raffles left that will be announced on the Cash and Luna Facebook page (www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086108192713).
A GoFundMe page for Cash and Luna can be found at www.gofundme.com/f/cash-and-his-diabetic-alert-dog-luna.
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