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A.D.H.D., Alzheimer’s Service Dogs, anxiety service dogs, ASPERGER’S SYNDROME, Autism, Autism Service Dog, BI-POLAR, Bi-Polar Service Dogs, CEREBRAL PALSY, Dementia Service Dogs, Depression Service Dogs, Dog Psychology, Dog Training, Dog Wish Service Dogs, EPILEPSY Service Dogs, Family Defense K9, Home Defense K9, Impulse control, MEDICALLY FRAGILE, neurological disability, O.C.D., Obedience Training, P.T.S.D., P.T.S.D. SERVICE DOGS, PDD.NOS Service Dogs, Psychiatric Service Dogs, reflux, Service Dogs, Service Dogs for meltdowns, sleep Apnea, Tethering, Tethering Service Dogs
At Dog Wish, because I have spent a great part of my life dealing with people inflicted with various and diversified, serious disabilities and disorders. I have, out of necessity, created many answers that are available for them to learn, and use, in overcoming the obstacles in their lives.
I believe that it isn’t the mountain you are facing that is the problem, but the mountain inside of you, that you have to overcome. It is very easy, because of the many negative disruptions we all experience daily, just living, to get caught up being critical, pessimistic, or just dark, and letting that darkness affect or control our thoughts, words, and actions. Turned inwards, this state of mind can produce horrific mental pain and emotional trauma, anxiety, depression, and other states of being that make life hard to live. No matter how hard it can be, a smile, a good intention you can follow through with, a single positive action can dispel that darkness and bring light, goodness, happiness, and joy into your life. I continue in this spirit.
Caring for a family member, or another loved one who is suffering with critical concerns and needs your help to function, can be one of the toughest of life’s battles. Your heart is overcome with concern, and it is easy to become hysterical about the problems you deal with, every 15 minutes, around the clock. When people call me for help, they are reaching out against seas and mountains of obstacles, hoping against the incredible odds for the possibility that I can or will help them, in some way, to make things better. It’s an awesome responsibility to be in that position.
Almost every client we train a Dog Wish Service Dog for comes to us ‘loaded” with their own particular challenges. It’s just a simple fact; a reality that we have to accept, and to face. We watch each person struggle to go outside of themselves; to reach out to the wonderful, precious dog, we have created for them. The single hardest obstacle they face is letting go of the problem mindset they have embraced along the way, dropping their guard to be “in control”, or to set the pain aside, relax, and to just “be” with their dog. Most of our clients are facing so many critical battles in their lives that seeing what is important “outside” of those battles is harder, all the time, and their ability to focus on something “outside” of their personal circumstances becomes seriously limited. They have learned from experience that dropping their guard can be painful and dangerous.
Being honest with yourself, and overcoming the temptations to succumb to the many critical problems in our lives, is a major concern for every person. It is hard not to give in and find excuses for succumbing to the multitude of problems we all face daily. Now, imagine what it would be like, especially if we are dealing with a constant, growing, uncontrollable problem, with someone in our home or life, whose affects can be a serious or critical problem every fifteen minutes of waking time, around the clock, daily, weekly, on-and-on. When this happens, like a stream of water that becomes shut off from the flow of a river, that water starts to become stagnant, and eventually is filled with toxic bacteria that is dangerous. They become so introspective that they began to hysterically reach for anything to help, empower, and benefit their fight against the disorders and disabilities that are causing them so much trouble. At that point it is the problem, which “controls”, and takes over the “focus” in the life of that person. Without meaning for this to happen, it is a battle I can see in the life of most every client I have. When you are dealing with the critical problems my clients deal with, you can multiply the affect their problems cause them, and it becomes no wonder they act and react the way they do. Like I said before, I am just stating facts.
Because of this process of caring for the life and disorders of someone who cannot care for themself, which causes so much concern in the lives of each caretaker, we have come to see these people as special; angels, fighting for and with each person they love who is disabled. This is a special process, which demands a never-ending vigilance, and can be costly in many ways in the life of those who step up to the task. In fact, those who go through this experience are 4 to 5 times as prone to develop mental and emotional disabilities in their lives as those who don’t.
It would be easy to just turn your back, ignore, and walk away from those who have found that life has positioned their life with these circumstances. Instead, I believe that what these people are suffering through, on a daily and hourly basis, can be greatly helped with the presence of a trained, caring dog, specifically selected for its’ capabilities, that can bring the empowerment, the capability, and the motivation to fight back, and equalize these traumatizing circumstances.
However, because of this process, there is a tendency with these people to see their trained Dog Wish Service Dogs as tools, designed to help them in their efforts to control and care for their loved ones, to respond as they desire. In no way consciously meaning to be negative or abusive, they at the same time begin to see the dog as a machine. They view the dog as, there to “do a job”, and who exists to perform” the functions that it was trained to do to help their loved one. In the personal effort of trying to take and “fit” the dog into their created unique scheme of life-styled behaviors, designed to help them succeed in their efforts to “survive”, they loose understanding of who and what the dog actually is, and the dog becomes an object and even a scapegoat, if or when it’s behaviors do not completely conform to their desires.
Dog Wish Service Dogs are not trained to reverse behaviors that care takers have allowed their affected loved ones to develop. Care takers will often allow those affected with mental disabilities and disorders to develop uncontrolled, deviant behaviors, because it is easier to be permissive than it is to suffer confrontation and resolution of wrongful behaviors that cause pain and anxiety between them and the person they are caring for. We have experienced some clients who have come to Dog Wish, trying to use their Service Dog to produce this resolution for them, which can be dangerous, cruel, and a totally wrong use of the dog.
Our Dog Wish Service Dogs to intervene in the life of their handlers, and do learn how to work with them, calming them in times of anxiety, anger, frustration, helping them in times of depression and panic, and pain. However, these behaviors are learned over a period of time, on an individual level, according to each individual person and circumstance.
This year we have experienced over two dozen dogs that, having been placed in families with affected persons, have had to learn to handle their behaviors. Most dogs have learned to play different games with their handlers, to dispel their anger and frustration, depending on the level and severity of their personal emotional situations. Some dogs have learned to stop their handlers from behaviors that could be dangerous by blocking them, re-focusing them, or creating a game to redirect them. Our dementia dogs have learned to use their training in unusual ways, to help their handlers, taking them where they need to go, to the car, home, the bathroom, bed, the couch, etc., and stopping them from where they should not go. Often these behaviors are enabled by their abilities to smell and feel the energies the client and handler are projecting out to them, that others would never even pick up on.
Dog Wish Service Dogs are not boring, 4-H styled, obedience dogs, with dull temperaments, who have been taught, “tricks”, which they monotonously perform with a “tread mill” mentality. Our dogs are motivated, intelligent, self-thinking, focused workers. Instead of styling their behaviors after those of “guide dogs”, we style their behaviors after those of trained Police “K9s”. It makes a huge difference. Our dogs enter into every environment they encounter, smell the smells, feel the energies, alert intelligently with understanding and compassion, and perform. Most of our clients have never experienced anything like this before in their lives, many take time to understand how their dogs work, and some just don’t get it. A Dog Wish Service Dog is not a tool, an object, or a “trick trained monkey”, they are a superior, intelligent, partner, who is there with advanced training they have received, to help, and often, take constant positive measures to protect their handlers, from environmental circumstances they constantly encounter, sometimes from themselves, and occasionally from others. In order to perform like this they need to be strong, confidant, intelligent, focused, and to have become a real “K9”. It’s not like they are different from other Service Dogs; there is no comparison. To expect a Psychiatric Service Dog to simply walk by your side and obediently submit to your desires is not just wrong, it’s dangerous. Our dogs are trained to compensate for their handlers inabilities to handle them. After all, we are training dogs for people with disorders and disabilities, and if the dogs can’t correct their incorrect behaviors, and make up for their mental/emotional problems, what good are they?
FOR EXAMPLE: recently, we had a delightful family drive out to see the Service Dog that Dog Wish has been training for them, (I say Dog Wish because no single person ever trains any specific dog for any client. Instead, it is the combined efforts of several people training, handling, and using the dog that produces a good dog. If you use one handler to train a Service dog, and that dog gets use to that one handler, it is bad for the dog, and for the recipient).
Every client is different, and the things you would do with one client should not automatically be done with another client. One of the biggest problems I have with my clients is that each one of them comes to me for personal, critical concerns. How do you share personal, intimate details about yourself with a stranger? The clients have to get to know me when they come, and often it is I who observe, and sense the specific intimate details about them that are important for our work.
In this case the client was suffering with frontal lobe dementia, and was much further along than I had been told. The dementia was affecting her in many ways that became obvious to me as we worked together. Therefore, I had to make many changes to accommodate my client, “on the spot”, which happens more than not.
The particular set of processes she was experiencing were critical, extremely emotional, and produced critical anxiety for her. The dog tuned into the recipient because of the training we put it through, and instantly understood and started working with her. Within three hours they were working without a leash, or any help or instruction. By the end of the first day the dog was alerting to her panic attacks, and her anxieties, on a level that was higher and faster than anyone else. The dog was actually telling us when she started having problems, and she in turn related to, listened to, and responded to the dog, better than she did to us. Although this is unusual, it is also very correct. Therefore, it quickly became obvious that the dog and her had become a team, and should not be separated for any significant period of time. While this is an optimum situation, and one you hope for, which can take weeks to produce, it is what we select, train, and place dogs hoping to achieve as the result of our work with every recipient.
However, in order to achieve these results it takes a mutual bonding between the handler, and the dog. Therefore, we insist that when coming to Dog Wish to pair with a Service Dog, the family and handler take time to learn, bond, and create the relationship that will become the catalyst, and produce these results. It is important that the client take time daily to work with, and create the relationship with their dog, that will encourage and motivate the relationship through which the dog can work. Expecting the dog to automatically and artificially perform and behave without that relationship is completely contrary to its’ intended use, and the very laws of nature. We don’t encourage a proper and close relationship between our clients and our dogs; we demand it. If that isn’t what you would want, you wouldn’t want one of our Dog Wish Service Dogs.
The end result is what you get, for what you do. It isn’t going to happen the way you want, just because you want it to. It’s the relationship with your dog that is important. Everyone wants a top-performing dog. For forty years, and a half a million people, I’ve seen it over and over again. What counts is the relationship between you and your dog, and how you then use that relationship to produce the performance you want. There is often a unique psychology between the handler and their dog that creates that performance, and I am proud to say that because of the way we train, with the dogs, and our client/handlers, we see it a lot.
This year a young woman came to us, with her mother, to learn to handle, and take home a dog trained to work with her. This 10-year-old girl was severely disabled with Autism, couldn’t speak, and was very troubled. Her mother hoped, against hope, that our dog, a “last-ditch” hope, would work with her, and keep her protected, from her own misguided and dangerous behaviors. Within 3 days they became a real team, inseparable, and really bonded. The second day the girl went to elope, and her dog stopped and sat on her. She accepted being tethered together with her dog, and they became best friends. The dog now accompanies her to school full time, rides the bus with her, plays with her after school, and has alerts when she is in need.
Learning to be a “team”, to work “together”, to make things happen as a consequence of the relationship you “share” with your dog is the most important, essential, primary focus of the entire process of obtaining a Dog Wish Service Dog. Helping our clients realize this is the most important thing we can do for them.
If you have any questions or concerns please address them to:
Bob Taylor, President
The Dog Wish, Incorporated
760-662-3767, bob@dogwish.org