Welcome to Our Blog!Building a Confident Dog General Training Tips Service Dog Education and more! |
 What can a dog do for severe, erratic, chronic pain? Most people would say nothing. They’re just dogs. I strongly disagree. In this post, I’ll give an overview of the various tasks that could be beneficial to someone with CRPS, how a dog can prevent flares, and how my own service dog helps me specifically
0 Comments
*For the purpose of this post my husband, who helped me write this post & who helped me owner-train my first service dog, will provide his concerns and frustrations for the “inside the home” viewpoint, but his thoughts and our eventual plan could be applied to anyone who lives with you and helps you out frequently.* *This has been cross-posted from Robbie’s Training Journal Blog* I have Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) full body. CRPS is a neurological condition in which the brain & central nervous system perceive all incoming stimuli as pain signals, without distinguishing between the soft touch of a hug or the sharp pain of a paper cut. For those with CRPS, simply living life is painful. There are days when the pain is so unbearable that all I want to do is curl up in bed and not move.  A few years ago I made the decision to adopt a dog & train him to be my service dog in order to help manage my daily pain. Robbie primarily does mobility assistance, but also performs pain interruptions. Robbie in my life means that at least 3x a day I must get up and take him outside, which is good for both of us. Additionally, I try to do things with him a little bit every day. No treatment has worked on me, so for now, working with a service dog is my long-term pain management plan. For the most part, anything I do requires me to grit my teeth and just do it. When my husband is home I will ask for help when I need it, but mostly I try to still be independent where I can be. A service dog will change the life of their new handler, and the lives of everyone close to the handler. You may be thinking, well that’s silly — the dog is for the handler, and only their life will change. It’s a reasonable thought. It’s a perfectly understandable thought. It’s exactly what we thought. And we were wrong.
Yesterday was a recovery day for me. For the CRPS, my Saturday added up to Intense Walking + Intense Standing + Intense Sitting = haha, good luck walking later... I know, it sounds dumb. With CRPS, though, this is life. Anyway, I was supposed to be resting. Resting is difficult for me, because I like being active. As I scrolled through NPR looking for interesting reads, I saw this headline, "Dogs attacked more than 5,300 mail carriers last year, Postal Service Says." Oh good grief...
All the colorful metaphors bounced around in my mind, and watching tv quickly got pushed aside as my brain jumped into action. I have a theory about dogs and dog bites, and this headline pushed into focus a topic I've been wanting to write about for a while, and didn't quite know where to start. Until yesterday.
The other route is to find a good program in your area that trains dogs from puppyhood to adulthood to be service dogs and then they match you with a dog that meets your needs and energy levels. People seem to be pretty divided on this subject, some saying program dogs are better others that owner dogs are better, or that one route is more costly than the other. From what I've experienced, it's a little like picking favorite sports' teams and being a diehard believer in one over the other. In an effort to explain a bit more about each option and provide my own insights in the pros & cons of each, I write this post to serve as a helpful guide to those in the early stages of deciding to work with a service dog.
|
AuthorHi, my name is Sally Fowler. I'm the owner & trainer for DADTC. I'll be writing posts with training tips, service dog basics, and more! Check out the categories below to find exactly what you're looking for! If you have any questions or there's a topic you'd like to see discussed here, please check out our contact page here. Archives
April 2024
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
