We’re research­ing ser­vice dogs and debat­ing Roxanne’s abil­ity to be trained as one for me. She seems quite apt, very intel­li­gent and able to respond well to com­mands even at age seven months. It’s way to early to begin any for­mal train­ing — let’s get to house train­ing and a few lit­tle com­mands like “come” “sit” “stay” and “put down that chicken”.

Years ago, we real­ized Thomp­son the Jack Rus­sell ter­rier could tell when I was get­ting a migraine headache. He has a set rou­tine: First, he stares at me, moves back and forth in front of me to get my atten­tion, some­times he’ll quiver a bit with a sense of (I guess) anx­i­ety. And then, if I lay down, he molds him­self to my body — as closely aligned to my side as pos­si­ble with­out com­pletely fus­ing with my skin. The only time he ever does this is before a headache. He’s not like Linus who shiv­ers and quakes at thun­der and loud noises like fire­works. (Did ya’ll know that’s a genetic trait and he can’t help it? It’s some­thing they look for when choos­ing dogs suit­able for train­ing as ser­vice dogs.)

Now we’re think­ing per­haps Rox­anne could be truly trained as a psy­chi­atric ser­vice dog. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing research. The Delta Soci­ety has great infor­ma­tion. There’s a ther­apy dog train­ing facil­ity nearby, but I don’t want Roxie to visit other peo­ple, I need tac­tile stim­u­lus to help with emo­tional or sit­u­a­tional over­load. Fas­ci­nat­ing, eh? Recently I met a young woman seek­ing a ser­vice dog for help man­ag­ing dia­betes. This is a new field and infor­ma­tion is scarce. Assis­tance dogs … who knew a ser­vice dog could assist me? It’s going to be a great jour­ney — train­ing and work­ing with a dog. It’ll take years.

Okay, so this is just the begin­ning of the jour­ney. It’ll take years…

click here for more inter­est­ing read­ing about what assis­tance dogs can be trained to do — on the iapd​.org website.

c