Breed dogs for medical alert dogs? Advertise here
Buyers and trainers use this page to find breeders whose lines do this work. List your kennel free, tick the industries your dogs work in, and advertise litters and stud dogs from proven working lines.
No breeders are listed here yet, so the first profiles get the page to themselves.
- Free basic profile: your breeder or company name, website, social media, location, breeds and industries.
- Litters and stud dogs advertised in their own sections, never mixed with puppies for sale.
- Premium showcase for your services and prices, previous customers, awards, video, gallery and health certificates, with your phone and email shown to buyers.
- Sponsored articles about your breed or industry, written and published by our team.
- Featured placement at the top of this page, labelled as sponsored.
Is it free to advertise here?
Yes. A breeder profile and your litter and stud dog adverts are free. Premium profiles, featured placement and sponsored articles are optional paid extras; see pricing.
Do I need a licence to advertise puppies?
In England you need a dog breeding licence from your council if you breed three or more litters in 12 months or breed and sell dogs as a business, and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own schemes. Licensed breeders show their licence number and issuing council on every advert. Puppies must be at least eight weeks old before they go to new homes.
Is my listing already here?
We add licensed breeders from councils' public registers. Search for your kennel name; if it is listed you can claim it and edit everything.
About medical alert dogs
Medical alert dogs warn a person of a medical event before it becomes dangerous: a hypoglycaemic episode in Type 1 diabetes, an oncoming seizure, or a change linked to conditions such as Addison’s disease or postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS). In the UK these dogs are trained by specialist charities, or by owners working with those charities, over many months. Breeders supply puppies with the right nose, temperament and health; they do not supply alert dogs.
What this discipline is
A medical alert assistance dog is taught to recognise the odour changes associated with a medical event and to give a trained alert, then in some cases to fetch a glucose kit, a phone or another person. Because the dog works for one disabled person, it counts as an assistance dog under the Equality Act 2010 with the same access rights as a guide dog. As with all assistance dogs, there is no UK register or certificate; Assistance Dogs UK (ADUK) issues its identification booklets only to dogs trained by member organisations.
Diabetic alert (sometimes “hypo alert”) and seizure alert are the two best-known forms. Alert work depends on scent, so it should not be confused with seizure response, where a dog is trained to react once a seizure has started.
Who trains or supplies these dogs in the UK
Medical Detection Dogs, based in Buckinghamshire, trains medical alert assistance dogs for conditions including Type 1 diabetes and runs a separate bio-detection research programme with NHS trusts and universities. It is a full member of Assistance Dogs International and a member of ADUK, and it also offers a supported route for people training their own dog.
Hypo Hounds (registered charity 1165858), founded in 2016 and based in Kent, trains diabetic alert assistance dogs mainly for children with Type 1 diabetes. Its dogs are trained at a centre in Maidstone and fostered in family homes so they are used to household life; the charity puts the cost of training one dog at just over £25,000.
Support Dogs, whose national training centre is in Sheffield, describes itself as the only UK organisation providing and training seizure alert dogs, alongside disability assistance and autism assistance dogs. It says about a quarter of the dogs it trains came from rescue centres or as unwanted pets.
All three are charities. None sells dogs, and none buys “pre-trained” alert dogs from breeders. Where they take puppies from outside, they select individuals and train them themselves.
Breeds and lines
Alert work draws on the same breeds as other assistance work: Labradors, Golden Retrievers, Cocker and Springer Spaniels, Poodles and their crosses. The traits that matter are a keen, food-motivated nose; a strong desire to work with people; steadiness in public; and the health to work for eight or more years. Breed-specific DNA tests, hip and elbow scores and eye tests under the Royal Kennel Club Health Standard are the baseline.
Some breeders will have sold puppies to one of the charities above, or bred a dog that an owner later trained with charity support. That history is a legitimate thing to state about a line. It does not mean the next litter will alert to anything.
What a buyer should ask a breeder
- Has any dog from your lines gone into training with Medical Detection Dogs, Hypo Hounds, Support Dogs or an owner-training programme?
- What scent or nose work do you do with your own dogs?
- What are the health-test results for both parents?
- How do you raise the litter, and how much handling do the puppies get?
- Do you hold a council breeding licence, if you need one?
Nobody can sell you a diabetic alert or seizure alert dog. Anyone advertising a puppy or young dog as a trained or “certified” medical alert dog should be avoided, and a family managing a child’s Type 1 diabetes should talk to the charities first, not to a breeder.
What breeders can list here
Breeders may describe their breed, health results, scent-work involvement and any known link between their lines and a medical alert charity. They may not describe puppies as alert dogs, medical dogs, trained or certified. Canine Breeder does not supply, train or assess medical alert dogs and is not connected to any of the charities named.
If you breed keen-nosed, steady dogs of the kind that medical alert charities look for, list your kennel here so that prospective owners and charity puppy teams can find you.