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Student Profile: Life With Tao
By Mellisa Blackburn
mblackb4@mscd.edu

Photo by Heather A. Longway-Burke • longway@mscd.edu Nicole Lamoreau, who has Type-1 diabetes, holds Tao, her service dog, who has saved her life by sensing dangerous changes in her blood sugar.

Nicole Lamoreau’s blood sugar levels are as erratic as the Colorado weather. Tao, her service dog, can smell when they drop too low and save her life.

Lamoreau, a senior at Metro majoring in psychology, was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes as a child. She requires several insulin injections a day.

Tao, a blue-eyed, 5-year-old husky with a penchant for french fries, enables Lamoreau to function like a normal person. Though she doesn’t look handicapped, low insulin levels can cause her to act drunk or pass out in a matter of minutes.

“I went to a restaurant and they wouldn’t let the dog in because I wasn’t blind,” Lamoreau said. “Some people don’t understand.”

Tao’s job is to create a scene if necessary. He once jumped into a classmate’s lap when Lamoreau became disoriented. And when Tao couldn’t rouse her in the middle of the night, he woke her 16-year-old sister to get help.

Animal Control picked up the feral husky in 2003 after a car had hit him. Confined to a backyard for most of his life, Tao had chewed through his rope and somehow survived on the street for four months.

The animal shelter couldn’t put him up for adoption, so they called Lamoreau, who has worked with dogs since she was 14 years old.

“He was kind of crazy to begin with, just because he hadn’t been around people much,” Lamoreau said. “For two months I was unsure if I could keep him.”

Tao eventually responded to her training, but his ability to smell low blood sugar was an added bonus.

Now she is busy with her dog-training company, The Tao Philosophy, that she was inspired to start after an animal control officer told her that if she could train Tao, then she could get any dog to do anything.

“They have the cognizance of a 3- to 5-year-old child,” Lamoreau said. “You need to give them boundaries.”

She once trained a black lab that wouldn’t look at its owner. Lamoreau developed a program to help the owner regain the dog’s respect.

“It was so funny,” Lamoreau said. “Her dog was in a power struggle. When I told her the dog could no longer sit down on the couch, she broke down and sobbed. She came in one week later and gave me a hug because her dog looked at her again.”

Lamoreau coaches owners on behavioral issues and works with aggressive dogs. She starts by creating a bond to build trust. After the dog responds to her simple commands, she’ll take it on short trips.

“Once they know the commands, you can take them out and acclimate them to different environments,” she said.

Lamoreau has trained more than 50 dogs over the last two years.

“I can train any dog,” she said. “It’s the people I have a problem with. They are unwilling to do what I’m telling them. Or they don’t keep doing it once they stop the class.”

This was the case when she worked with a husky that was 90 percent wolf.

“That one didn’t end in the best,” she said. “They weren’t willing to do what the animal needed.”

Lamoreau also assists the Adams County Animal Shelter to determine if a dog can be rehabilitated with different training.

Her dream is to own her own dog-training center after she gets a master’s in animal behavior from the American College of Applied Science.

As Lamoreau hugs her husky close, Tao lays his ears back and squints.

“This is his working face,” she said.

He is alert, ready for action. It’s what he does.