Service dog is ready for middle school

At two and a half years old, she’s easily the youngest member of the seventh grade.
She’s also the furriest.
However, after just one day of middle school, Baymax Sessions, a yellow lab from Salt Lake City, is already breaking new ground in Lumpkin County.
When she entered first period social studies on Friday, Baymax became the first medical service dog to go to school in Lumpkin County. But she wasn’t there to learn.
Baymax works as a diabetic alert dog for LCMS student Charlotte Sessions, who has Type 1 Diabetes.
“She is pretty sensitive to high and low blood sugars because she has other autoimmune diseases, so whenever she gets sick or has any kind of flare ups, she experiences really big fluctuations in blood sugar,” Katie Sessions, Charlotte’s mom, said. “...We want to keep her safe and try to prevent any kind of adverse affects from having a low or high blood sugar event.”
That’s where Baymax comes in.
“What the dogs do is they alert to high and low blood sugar and they are a medical alert dog,” Katie said.
Charlotte explained what an alert looks like in real time.
“What will happen is I will get her to sit in front of me and I’ll hold up my hands and say ‘Ok, Baymax, is there a problem?’ and she’ll move her nose and touch my left hand for low or right hand for high,” she said. “That’s if I catch it, but sometimes if I completely miss it and don’t feel anything at all, which happens a good bit, she will call me and then I’ll get her to sit in front of me and I’ll ask her the questions.”

READY FOR SCHOOL

Now, Charlotte is ready to bring Baymax, and his protection, to class.
“Finally after two and a half years, Charlotte said she was ready to take Baymax to school,” Katie said. “Which is awesome because she will be taking a test or have something start to go on at school and start to feel like ‘maybe I’m a little bit low’ and she’s having to constantly get out her monitors and check her blood sugar and do all of the things, but now Baymax will be right at her side and this will allow her to concentrate at school more and feel safer, hopefully. That is our goal.”
And Katie says the school system was eager to help make that goal a reality.
“When it was finally time, we contacted the school and they then directed us to Katie Lowry who is the Special Education Director at the county and because Baymax will be their first service dog in the school system, we got to reach out to surrounding counties, work together, research ADA law and develop the policy for having a service dog in Lumpkin County School System. They have been excited every step of the way.”

HELPING OTHERS

LCMS Principal Nathan Gerrells said it’s about laying the foundation for the needs of future students as well as current kids.
“I think it’s really exciting and I am just really thankful for the Sessions family that they have been patient, they've worked with us to make sure that we did get the practice and the policies in place so that if anything like this were to happen in the future, we would all be better prepared and understand the needs more….I think it’s setting a good, solid foundation for future service animals if they’re needed."
As for the Sessions, Katie said they were honored to be a part of potentially helping other kids.
“I feel like it’s a great responsibility but also really exciting to be a part of something that’s groundbreaking,” she said. “I want to handle it right and I want to handle it openly with this whole system so that we’re developing and changing along with the students’ needs in the community, because this year it’s Charlotte that has a new need, but next year it’ll be another student.”
As for Baymax, one day in and she seems to already be enjoying middle school.
“It was really really good,” Charlotte said of Baymax’s first day. “Baymax did great. I can just tuck her under my desk and she just stayed there the whole time. My blood sugar was high so she alerted to my blood sugar during the class when I was taking a quiz, so that was really cool.”
And for Charlotte, having her service animal by her side has been an exciting change.
“On Friday, I was like ‘can we please do another class period?’” she said.