ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how the invisibility of a potentially fatal human chronic illness is made visible through the assistance of medical alert assistance dogs who become family members, autonomous workers, and close companions, sharing the ‘doing’ of essential routines and practices of care within a tightly bound multispecies partnership. Human and nonhuman animal interactions and experiences, within medical and social contexts, emphasise the usefulness of the keen canine sense of smell in the early detection of illness. The familiar coexistence of dogs and humans, living together within human-structured homes and communities, are investigated in the context of the sociology of health and illness, and both species’ efforts to communicate with each other are magnified and their discourses examined. Exploration of Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune chronic illness that has neither a cure nor clinical treatment to prevent its development, pinpoints the difficulties emerging from losing awareness of symptoms of imminent hypoglycaemia and thus becoming ‘hypo-unaware’. The seven hypo-unaware participants introduced here have learnt to rely on their canine ‘stand-ins’ for an embodied sensation. Discussion of ethical and social morality, and the need to encourage greater recognition of differences between acceptable use or unacceptable exploitation of nonhuman animals, concludes the chapter.
