It's starting to feel more like pre-summer here, and with the heat comes an added challenge in managing my CRPS. 

After being out in hot weather, the safest way for me to cool down is to warm up. 
(yes, you read that right)

Living with CRPS is hard. Hard doesn't seem like a strong enough word.

CRPS pain is medically ranked as being worse than the most painful things people can imagine - amputation, kidney stones, child birth. It's not merely the pain, though. People have a weird relationship with pain... from the time we're kids we're immediately taught to ignore and override, to focus on when it'll be all better again. Naturally, when someone hears we LIVE IN pain, I believe they simply can't process the concept. Why can't we look ahead to the future, push it aside in the moment, and "get over it"?

Hey, I know you're paralyzed, but just get up, walk over there, and climb the stairs. Push through. Get over it. Look to the future, when it's all better.

Hear it now? I would never dream of saying that to someone with paralysis, but it's a sentiment commonly said to people with severe pain conditions, like Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. 

I live a very tightly managed life. I have to, on account of living with full body Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Managing as many details about how a room is set up, how easy it is to make meals, how many steps I need to take to accomplish a task, having different clothing options for different sensitivity level days, how much noise or stimulation I'm exposed to, and so on are only a few of the multitude of measures we've taken in our lives to minimize flares and maximize my service dog's ability to help me. 

It's easy to forget how particular we have been about building our life sandbox for me, because by now, it's not "accommodation" by our metrics, it's life. 

Recently, we stepped outside our sandbox to go on vacation to see my family on the East Coast, and got an extremely jarring shocks to our systems as a result. 1,800 miles driven, there & back, 2 days each way, and days of being without our system of structure, mitigation, and the added complication of something we usually have the luxury to avoid... The Untrained Pet Dog. It was a disaster and an absolute mistake to go at all. Me being me, I began writing this blog post on the drive home to offer suggestions to fellow and future service dog teams on handling this situation better than we did. ​

It's November! November, for those of you new to our page or new to CRPS life, is the official awareness month for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. The awareness color is either orange or a fire gradient of red-orange-yellow. Every year, I honor CRPS month by sharing training tips, facts about CRPS, facts about CPRS Service Dogs, or some other way to educate people about this life. This year, I'll be posting every day on Facebook (I will try to match on Instagram), 30 different abilities and changes which have only been made possible in my life by working with a service dog for my CRPS. Some will be things made possible simply by training my own SD, because the truth is, change happens before they're doing task work. 

Preview of Fundamental Retrieve - essential for service dogs in training, beneficial for dogs with zero toy drive to learn how to play fetch

Preview of Puppy Paw Camp - essential for new puppy owners, starting with a puppy as a service dog prospect, or puppy owners who want their pup to start off on the right paw

Preview of Beginner Paw Camp - for dogs 7 months & older, who will be new to joining your household, or an essential starter package for new dog owners. Includes sessions BEFORE bringing your dog home to help you prepare

Teaching tasks is not always as simple as teaching Sit. Unlike your basic commands, you may or may not be able to find clear instructions online or in a book. Even if you can find instructions online, those instructions may not fit with what you need for your disability or what you're capable of doing with your disability. I often find this to be true when mapping out tasks for CRPS - many tasks are similar to other mobility tasks, but the way they're taught for the average mobility-impaired individual often lends the dog to accidentally triggering pain flares if I taught it the same way. 

Part of my job as a service dog trainer is thinking through how to map out various tasks.

​I think through every part of the task, see it in my mind, work through variables of what I know a dog can do, what I know my dog can do, what I need, and options for how we might get there. I've done this process for every single task I already offer in my training program for service dogs, and I repeat it anytime I need to add a task for my own service dog, or for adding a specific task for a client.

​My service dog training program is broken into separate courses, to better enable me to jump in wherever your team is currently, and to help clients start (getting a dog) to finish (working coherently in public). I offer a task training course for teaching all of the tasks you need and public access knowledge, and the option for teaching tasks one at a time, if you're on a tight budget. Learn more about these options by booking a free consult with the button below :)

If you're not currently in a position to afford working one on one with me or another trainer, though, I encourage you to use the following outline to help yourself learn how to map out tasks or teach this exact task for your own team :) 

​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.

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.