Comfort dogs, gluten intolerance and other mysteries.

In a polite conversation with three medical students, the subject of comfort dogs was raised. I expressed scepticism.

What makes pets comfort animals and what purpose do they serve? They seem to be popping up everywhere, shops, hardware retailers restaurants and even aeroplanes?

Have they a necessary function that justifies their official designation because in most jurisdictions they are permitted  to accompany their owners with the authority that attends seeing eye dogs?

I asked my young students whether we become so traumatised and anxious that we can only go about if surrounded by animals.

I have no personal objection to dogs and even like some breeds. My parents towards the end of their life were comforted greatly by a black labrador, though my mother managed to break her hip when the dog, thinking she was going out, leapt up suddenly underneath her legs.

My talking companions were uncomfortable with any sense of scepticism. To them comfort dogs were both important and necessary.

Not only do they ensure against anxiety they are important for blind people and I could hardly question that.  

So long standing was their use with the visually impaired but more than that, my companions maintained, they were important for people with epilepsy because they could tell if their master was going to have a seizure and in diabetes because they could immediately alert their master if their sugar was too high or low.

 My expression must have alerted them to a rising pressure gauge of disbelief but rather than resile from these extraordinary claims they pressed further.

Not only could comfort animals detect blood sugar levels and imminent seizures they could sniff out the presence of the gluten, a protein usually found in products made from grains.

Modern society is beset with gluten intolerance, so much so that every product of rye, oats and barely is labelled with declarations of “gluten free”. This strange societal obsession relates to the rare disorder Coeliac Disease.

This very uncommon condition results from an intolerance in the gut to the protein gluten found in the most common grains. It is not a form of allergy but is classed as an autoimmune disease.

To indicate its rarity I have only encountered it a handful of times in a long history of medical practice.  It troubles less than one in every two hundred.  

It is perplexing that the whole food industry producing wheat, barley, rye and oats should have to indicate its presence or not.

To add to confusion many foods that declare themselves gluten free actually contain it. The other extraordinary thing is that many people seem paralysed by the fear of the condition and it has acquired a reputation almost equal to the of the great plague despite being, while unpleasant, easy to diagnose and almost never fatal.

The vast majority of persons who demand that their food be free of gluten do not have coeliac disease and have none of the symptoms of that disorder and are unlikely to meet a sufferer during their life time.

 Despite this, teachers are very familiar with mothers who declare definitively that the school tuck shop never serve their children with food containing gluten or dairy.

So dairy food, one of the most valuable sources of protein and energy becomes relegated to the list of poisonous substances to be avoided not only in school tuck-shops but also in many of the coffee houses of the world whose owners are more than familiar with the patrons who insist on buying dairy free coffee.

Unfortunately the substitutes which include almond milk are wholly inadequate nutritionally compared to milk.  So we can assume that the non-diary customers would rather be malnourished than poisoned.

The modern world relies notions that are wholly irrational and unscientific but none the less fuel a multi-billion dollar food industry.

The objection to dairy food relates to the protein casein and people who claim to have reactions to both gluten and casein must be so vanishingly rare that the country’s population would scarcely include more than a handful of them.

This issue, the fear of substances like Gluten,  was considered in the distinguished English Journal The Lancet in a review article in 2025.

It is therefore not clear what the gluten sniffing canines are smelling but it’s unlikely to be gluten which is odorless especially in small quantities.  Presumably their owners set them loose on a variety of foods that bear the “gluten free” label in case they have been deceived in some way. [

In any case the vast majority of people would have no idea what coeliac disease looks like or the nature of  its symptoms but have come to regard gluten as one of life’s hidden poisons.

The gluten sniffing dogs would be taken to restaurants and places where food is prepared and the owners are unable to inspect the source of the ingredients.  This would be impractical as restaurant owners are not likely to cooperate so the dogs would have to be confined to the domestic situation.

So as the idea takes hold that such dogs are available to be trained and we can expect our eating places to be festoon with them sniffing the food and presumably sending it back to the cook if the dog gives the right response.  Owners of restaurants would become obliged to allow the customers dogs to sniff food before it is served.

The use of comfort animals to monitor blood glucose is on its face a much more dangerous project.

 Does the animal display one form of behaviour for elevations in blood sugar and another for decline?  In other words is the dog or animal able to signal its owner when the blood glucose level is too high and show a different warning if the level is too low?  

Are these two behaviours easily distinguished? Blood testing by pin prick or urine testing seems far more reliable. In any case it it’s a heavy burden to place on a poor dog because precipitate drops in blood sugar or dramatic rises in blood sugar can be fatal.

When pressed on the matter as to exactly how the dogs could tell levels of blood sugar my companions resorted to  the frequent but unsatisfactory response, ‘they can just tell.”  

“Like magic?” I averred. This was not received well.

Perhaps dogs can detect subtle changes we are not aware of. So far studies on this have resulted in nothing to support this contention.

In any case, it does not seem reasonable to desert scientific testing for the vagaries of canine behaviour most of which can be hard to interpret.

This leads on to the politics of comfort animals. These are not always dogs as it mostly assumed. In one case, in a Victorian city, the comfort pet is a llama. The refusal of a grocery store to admit the beast has led to litigation.

It seems inevitable that the size and breed of comfort dogs will include larger and more ferocious animals. I was present at a conference where two rather large comfort dogs started a fight and had to be separated.

More of these animals are being allowed to board aeroplanes. Normally these sorts of pets would expected to be small and easily cradled but it is in the nature of human beings to push an envelop that will inevitably increase the size and irritation of these pets. We are yet to see the final result of all this.

It is interesting to note that there are so far no examples of comfort cats. Although the owners of cats are no less affectionate towards their charges than dog owners, cats are far less malleable and more difficult to train and interprThe owners of comfort dogs derive considerable comfort from their pets with strong and emotional attachment and it is said that a dog will love a person more than he loves himself. However the question arises. Do these animals prevent or cure mental disorders even though they clearly make those who own them and carry them about less anxious?

If there was a clear cut answer to this doctors and hospitals would prescribe dogs instead of medication for mental disorders. Certainly they advise and even encourage patients to access comfort animals but stop short of writing scripts to take to the local RSPCA pound.

Anyone who has had experience with seeing eye dogs and the agencies that train them would testify as to the enormous expense incurred to produce them and the rarity of the breeds that prove suitable for the purpose.

The idea that sufficient quantities of these animals would ever be available to sniff out gluten or predict epileptic seizures remains a pipe dream.

Turning to my young and enthusiastic medical student friends I could only repeat what an old Professor of Medicine told me and my colleagues. The only doctor who does not make a mistake is a medical student.