By their side
College sophomore Nick Opack has Type 1 diabetes. So does his younger sister and their father. For years they’ve relied on dogs who are specially trained to detect the scent of low blood sugar and alert them when something is wrong. By Amy Halpern |
April 12, 2021
Nick, right, with his father, Larry, and their dogs Rainy (blue collar) and Clyde. Photo by Lindsey Max
The alert on Colleen Opack’s cellphone went off around 4 a.m. She grabbed the phone from her nightstand and checked the app that tracks her kids’ blood sugar levels. The sound was warning that her son, Nick, then a freshman at Catholic University, had a glucose reading that was dangerously low.