While lots of schools around the world fights against receiving special needs kids for many reasons, a lovely british girl goes to school with a dog, her guardian angel.
The story of Rebecca Farrar is just an example that it is possible to receive special need kids in regular schools. "If there is a will, there is always a way".
Rebecca has Diabetes - autoimmune disorder that prevents the pancreas from producing insulin.
The dog, a chocolate labrador named Shirley, is the first-ever medical assistance dog to be allowed into a mainstream public school in Britain. The dog follows Rebecca everywhere—including to school. If Rebecca's blood sugar drops dangerously low, Shirley smells it, licks Rebecca, thereby alerting her teachers that it's time for them to act.
Officials from Medical Detection Dogs aren't exactly sure what Shirley is smelling—and they're not the only ones pleasantly mystified. According to the The New York Times, in 2008, researchers at Queen’s University in Belfast investigated dog owners reports that their pets warned them of hypoglecemic attacks.
While 65 percent of those surveyed said their dog had shown a behavioral reaction to at least one hypoglycemic episodes, the precise odor emitted by the human body that alerts the dogs has yet to be identified. "Dogs have been trained to detect certain odors down to parts per trillion, so we are talking tiny, tiny amounts. Their world is really very different to ours," Claire Guest, CEO of Cancer and Bio-Detection Dogs, told Reuters TV in 2009.
