Service dog quietly comes to rescue of child with “deadly” food allergies

A woman captured the remarkable moment her daughter’s service dog stepped in to potentially save her life, and told Newsweek how the animal has helped her little girl to increase the variety of her diet.

Natalie Rice shared video footage of her daughter’s food allergy detection dog Harley sniffing out a potential threat during a family holiday dinner at her parent’s golf club before alerting her human companions to the problem.

According to a study published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, approximately 2.2 percent of children and adolescents in the U.S. have peanut allergies.

While the severity of these allergies varies from person to person, Rice’s daughter’s is serious, exposure to nuts can result in life-threatening anaphylaxis, which only an epinephrine injection can prevent.

“Her first reaction when she was very young was to the tiniest bit of peanut butter and it was immediate,” Rice told Newsweek. Today, the severity of the reaction would be considerably worse.

A little over a year ago, on one of the few days their four-year-old golden retriever Harley wasn’t with them, Rice saw just how much worse it got when her daughter had an immediate reaction that required an injection of epinephrine and 4+ hours of observation in the ER.

During this time she experienced severe stomach pain and congestion, bloodshot eyes, and hives all over her torso. Even after she was sent home, Rice’s daughter woke up early the next morning to find her symptoms had returned. She was experiencing a biphasic reaction and required another injection of epinephrine before returning to hospital.

“Anaphylaxis is deadly. You don’t mess with it,” Rice said. “One minute everything can be fine, and then you can take a bite of food and your world turns upside down.”

Harley provides Rice’s family with an “extra line of defense” but has also helped her daughter enjoy a greater variety of food. “We used to skip so many foods because we thought they were probably safe, but we weren’t sure, and it is always best to err on the side of caution,” Rice said. “Now Harley can confirm that these foods, she’s actually opened up the options for my daughter.”

However, the videoed incident from their recent holiday serves as a reminder of why Harley is so important to have around.

Rice said that, that day, they had spoken to someone from dining services at the club and were “assured there were no peanuts on the buffet.” There had never been any issues prior but, with Harley on hand, they still made sure to see if her daughter’s plate of food passed his sniff test.

“When Harley detects peanuts, she touches my leg to alert,” Rice said. “When she does not detect peanuts, she makes eye contact to let me know it’s all clear.”

In the video, Harley can be seen doing more of a “leg lift than a touch” which is something Rice puts down to her awkward position. “I prefer to have her check with me standing up, but we also practice with me seated so we can be more discreet in restaurants,” she said.

It was only a subtle movement, but it could well have been enough to save a life. Rice can’t be certain where the nuts Harley detected came from but she has a theory.”

“At a buffet it’s not as controlled—food and plates don’t go directly from the kitchen to your seat at the table,” she said. “I believe this is what the issue was: trace amounts on the plate. Someone—whether a guest or staff member—had peanut residue on their hands and touched the plate.”

Rice also noticed there were two different buffet lines so, as a test, went back and got Harley to test each individual food item on a different plate. This time, it passed Harley’s checks. “So there were two variables that we changed: getting the food from the second line and separating the food out,” Rice said. By separating out the foods, Rice was trying to establish if cross-contact, when an allergen is accidentally transferred from one food to another, had occurred.

“I can’t be sure if it was one of the foods on the other line or if it was the plate itself, but if I had to make a guess, I would say it was the plate itself.”

A beloved member of the family when he’s not on duty, Rice said she shared the video of Harley in action to not only “show the significance of cross-contact and how it can make something that should be safe very dangerous for someone with food allergies.”