Spoons are units of energy for the chronic illness community. It's not a perfect fit to describe how our energy levels change throughout the day based on our respective conditions, and often misses the complexity & ever-changing temperament of those conditions, but it simplifies the equation enough in order to help us explain things to our friends & family. The basic principle comes from an article called The Spoon Theory. The idea is that each day, we wake up with a varying count of energy units and part of the management of our conditions is that we can only use a certain amount of "spoons" on each task we need to do that day. Healthy people have more spoons than we do, and theirs get replenished when they rest, whereas ours do not. In this post, I'll talk a bit about my energy count, how my condition impacts my energy levels, and then tie in how Robbie affects my spoon count in his job as a service dog.
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In the front of Robbie's training binder, I keep a chart for Goals & Accomplishments. As we go along, I'll write down little things that he did really well on, things I want to work harder on, and ideas for better ways to do things or a new task. I find that writing these down helps me keep track of how he is doing at a quick glance. In this post, I'll share some of our goals for this year and a few things we have already accomplished. Robbie looks and acts, for the most part, like a Malinois. A Malinois wrapped in an over-sized Dane pelt that oozes off of him whenever he switches from dog mode to snuggly melting dog pile mode. When he lays on his dog bed, he begins tucked into a small ball, with his tail tucked over his nose. As he sleeps, he stretches, he runs, he woofs, he growls, and sometimes even howls. When he awakens, most of the time he can be found sprawled across his bed, head falling over the edge, and jowls hanging to the floor. When we Dremel his claws on the table, Robbie leans his head off the side of the table in a manner that looks thoroughly uncomfortable! Farther and farther, his head oozes off the table until he comes close to slipping off the edge all together. There is no other ways to describe it than a dog stuck in a state of "ooze" each time he relaxes. Service dogs should be very tolerant animals. They should be fine with having their ears pulled, being hugged, being poked & prodded, and handled in any manner of ways. Not to say that they should be continually harassed, but they should be even tempered enough to handle a trip to the vet or an over-zealous child saying hello. Robbie will sit patiently as a child hugs him. He will sit calmly as a toddler tries to feed him rocks or pokes his face with a stick. He is a rockstar. Part of why Robbie is so tolerant is due to his natural disposition. The other part is because we handle him all the time. We made sure from the beginning to test anything and everything with him, from having us near his food bowl at dinner to gently pulling on ears once a day. We also love to play with his oozey Dane wrinkles, as we call them. He seems to enjoy it; I think mostly he likes having his fur scratched and neck massaged. When we play with his neck fur, he begins to look more like a cobra flaring his neck flaps. There is enough extra skin on him to make a new puppy. The longer he lounges in front of our wood stove in the winter, the more he oozes. His jowls fall away from his face. His neck fur melts away from the muscles. His ears perk up, twitch, and fall to the sides. He twists his body in ways that seem impossible. He grows in length as he stretches across the floor; to 5ft the last time we measured! Proof enough that his hips were healthy, even if we hadn't gotten him tested. When he wants something but knows not to break command, his neck goes into "turtle mode," and grows an extra 4-5 inches in length. He makes himself bigger and more Dane-like when he hears a noise at the door, and morphs into full-blown Malinois as he rampages through our yard. *The points covered in this post are NOT trained tasks. Nothing listed here should be your reason for getting a service dog. What I discuss in this post is not the same as bracing, interrupting episodes, or performing DPT (to name a few) - which are all trained tasks. This post is meant to reveal a side of the partnership between disabled handler & service dog that outsiders rarely see. Additionally, these are side effects that Robbie in particular has had on my life wth CRPS & may be different for other teams.* When outsiders see a service dog team in public, they see only what's on the surface. They see the dog bracing, alerting to a seizure, guiding their handler, opening doors, and more. They see impeccable behavior... so much so that sometimes they don't even see the dog. All of this is what the general public should see. Part of working with a service dog is to be so good that the team that fades into the crowd. On the surface of it all, Robbie & I are a team working in unison to accomplish daily, mundane tasks. Below the surface, we are more than could possibly be imagined. We are both better versions of our past selves, encouraging each other to conquer fears, and working as one to achieve intangible goals. Robbie was an energetic, stubborn destroyer of chairs, houses, & patience. I was a storm of conflicted emotions teetering between fury & hopelessness. We were a perfect match. Growing up, I always either took our pet dog to the vet to have her claws clipped or did at home with my father’s help. Jess jumped on people a lot and we knew it was time to trim her claws when her exuberance would leave long red marks on our arms and legs. Clipping with standard guillotine style nail trimmers was normal, and I never thought differently until the trainer who helped us with Robbie instructed us on how to use a Dremel for doing claws. Luckily for us, Adam already owned a Dremel, and knew how to use it. In this post, I’ll go over why it’s important to keep your dog’s claws short, what a Dremel is, how to introduce it positively, the steps for working on your dog’s claws with it, and additional tips about dremelling. At the end, there will be a short video of Robbie's claws being worked on. |
My Name is Sally...I have a condition called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. This blog is about my journey training Robbie, a dog who helped me regain independence, confidence, and achieve the impossible in the face of my disability. It continues on with the training of Austin, Robbie's successor. Check Out... - "More than a Dog" was published on a site called The Mighty Categories
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