Kentucky Boy Receives Diabetic Alert Dog After Close Call

After an emergency at school, Grady Lucas’s community has pitched in to buy him a diabetic alert dog.

Grady is ten years old and has spent the first decade of his life fighting Type 1 diabetes. In July 2019, Lucas had a diabetic emergency, but the monitor he wore did not alert him to the danger.

“Somebody came running into my office — and to this day, I still don’t know who it was — and told me, “We need you. Grady is having an emergency,'” Grant Lick Elementary School nurse Beth Lierl remembered. “I grabbed his emergency glucagon and ran to the gym,” she said. “He couldn’t talk to us. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t respond to anything.”

Lierl helped to save the child’s life, but did not stop there. Immediately after, she started a GoFundMe to help Grady’s family get him a diabetic support animal. With the community’s aid, Lierl helped to raise $23,000. Now, one year later, Grady and “Lucky” are finally together.

Diabetic Alert Dogs of America in Las Vegas, Nevada, trained “Lucky” the goldendoodle over the course of seven months. One of Lucky’s trainers then flew across the country to deliver him to the family. The same trainer then spent two days teaching Grady how to give his furry companion commands, and to keep him sharp with daily “scent games.”

While Lucas originally intended to name the dog “Bob,” he changed his mind when the two finally met. “He didn’t look like a Bob,” he said.

Parents Lauren and Geoff Lucas are thankful for the peace of mind this furry new guardian provides. “Just not to have to be on every second. Our mind can maybe actually not be on Type 1 diabetes for 10 minutes and let the dog kind of do his job,” Lauren said. “It’s going to be really nice.”