11 months into Robbie's training we were dealt a major setback that involved him getting very little active interaction from me and minimal public access training just as we had begun it in earnest. This setback lasted 4-5 months, roughly. It was extremely frustrating and at the time I only saw it as a failure on my part that I wasn't trying hard enough. Looking back, I can see that it set us back, but it also launched us forward. I'm writing about this now, because I feel it will be relevant to all of the teams out there today staring down the Coronavirus and worrying that their service dog's training timeline is in jeopardy. It is not - you will be okay. Let me tell you why. January to May 2016, 11 months into Robbie's TrainingThis time was and still is a very traumatic memory for me because of what happened to me and how I was treated. Despite that, I feel my experiences with Robbie during that time is a close approximation for what other teams may be feeling with recent stay-at-home orders. We adopted Robbie in February of 2015 and immediately started precision basic obedience, then moved on to advanced obedience and socialization training. By December of that year, Robbie had been doing light public access training for a month or two and knew 2-3 tasks, bracing and opening doors at home (I believe - it was a long time ago). In January of 2016, I needed to go to the hospital to be under anesthesia for routine cavity repairs and one root canal. It needed to be done this way due to my CRPS-TMJ combo. This was extremely stressful on my jaw and CRPS pain levels, and as a result it took one full month to recover. It was supposed to, at least. As part of my TMJ, my jaw had been prone to dislocation on the left side - meaning it had done so 4x in the past. The last 2 times, the CRPS had complicated issues and caused muscle spasms that made my jaw freeze open and dislocated. Previously, large doses of medication over 3-4 days would make it resolve on its own. The final week of my recovery from the dental work, I yawned and my jaw dislocated. We tried to go to the ER but they refused treatment. Local medial professionals were at a loss, so they sent me home to wait for it to close on it's own with low dose pain meds and muscle relaxers to be given 4x a day. It wasn't enough. My jaw was dislocated and locked open for one month and two weeks. Finally I was referred to a jaw specialist in another city who relocated it with me under nitrous oxide. He then wired my jaw shut. I could open it wide enough to just barely slide a straw between my teeth. The wires cut into my cheeks daily. 1-2 weeks of that, then he did surgery so my jaw could no longer dislocate (and he removed the wires). From there I had 2 months of recovery plus PT for my jaw (yep that's a thing!) and lots of medication around the clock to combat muscle tension in my jaw and the physical pain of both the surgery combined with the CRPS. I was not only home-bound, but also bed-bound. Any attempt to get out of bed resulted in me becoming extremely dizzy and nauseous with pain in 2-5 minutes. I could only talk because I'd taught myself how to do so in previous dislocations - but it was hardly clear speech. And it was immensely painful to speak, because it called upon extra muscles. Robbie During that TimeFebruary and March asked more of Robbie than he was ready for in the ideal training timeline, and asked it of him without me being able to guide him the way I would normally have been able to do. It was then that we saw his resiliency, true ability to adapt and learn quickly, and that the previous 11 months of long hours, tears of pain, and hard work had all been worth it. February saw Robbie's first trip to the ER. He showed us that he could stay focused on me in a time of crisis, and that when he sees other people hurt me - nurses - all he does is snuggle closer to me. March saw Robbie's first trip to a hospital for an 8 hour day in the pre-op room, and an overnight stay in the hospital. He showed me he could help me stumble to the bathroom and get me off the toilet better than any of their nurses. He showed us he could adapt to a new environment, accept his place mat in a strange room and still settle down to fall asleep. He showed us he could snuggle in my hospital bed, leave my meals alone, and watch nurses silently without trying to protect me. My husband got the experience of leaving me alone so that he could give Robbie potty breaks and walk him by doing flights of stairs. From January to April/May, I was mostly bed-bound. I would sneak out of bed every day, usually twice a day, to play with Robbie or try to do short bursts of training. Robbie was patient, and learned quickly. When I would collapse on the floor from dizziness, Robbie would get me off the floor and back into bed. He'd then promptly curl up on the bed with me and spend hours lying at my feet. At the end of the day, my husband would walk him. He got very little public access time - probably only 4-6 times in that entire span, and none of them were training-focused. Every trip asked him to learn on the fly - not ideal. I felt enormously guilty for not working with him more. I felt like I was a failure for not pushing myself harder to train him. I was worried that the lack of PA time would be a setback we wouldn't recover from - that he would forget how to be confident and focused in public. I worried that he was sad with me for ignoring him or not giving him enough attention. I was wrong. Training was minimal but what little we did still made a difference. We focused on improving his non-verbal signals. He learned how to do familiar commands with my voice all muffled and strained. He listened closer. He was so damn bored that any amount of work was fun and engaging and he was all for it! This meant that things he previously dragged his feet on, like retrieve, were suddenly more interesting. We were able to make real progress on him learning to Take, Hold, and Give objects. We'd been working on that for close to a year without much luck because he didn't have a natural desire to retrieve, but I guess being bored and missing me was the encouragement he needed. As I healed and grew stronger, we discovered areas that did need extra attention. His close heel had slipped a little, and working in public needed a step back to easy stores at lower activity times to give him a chance to re-learn how to focus on me and be relaxed. While we slipped there, our bond as a team and my ability to believe in the strength of what we could accomplish together was launched forward to a point some teams take years to find. So we had to return to the basics for a bit - so what? It gave us both a chance to improve ourselves and our teamwork in the field. It gave me a chance to find any other weak points and make them stronger. It gave me the time to heal and get back to full force. We made it through together. What Does Any of This Have to Do with You?Right now, your public access training might have been placed on hold indefinitely due to your city or country demanding a lock down order on your area in an effort to contain the Coronavirus. You may be thinking that your service dog's timeline has been permanently thrown off track, maybe even halted completely. Do not give up on your dog's training - this can't last forever. Yeah you can't do the training you've been doing in previous months - so what? Find something else to work on. Get creative. You may be on lock down, but that's no reason for your dog's training and progress to be lock down. You could...
You can do this - I believe in all of you. It's hard to see setbacks as anything other than failures, but I ask you to try to see this particular setback as a chance to be great. A chance to be creative with your dog's training. A chance to grow with your dog. If it gets really overwhelming, start making a list of everything you want to work on when the lock down is lifted. That way, you'll get the sense of being able to do something about all these great training ideas and you'll have a goal list ready to go when it is time to resume PA training.
I've been home bound for 6 years. Under normal circumstances, Robbie goes to town 1x per week, sometimes every other week. Is it ideal? Nope. But it's out of my control. We live far from a city, and I can't drive. My normal life is suddenly a lot of people's lives - minus the CRPS. Being home-bound does not tie your hands when it comes to training your dog. It merely asks you to think outside the box and work a little bit harder and little bit smarter. Change your doubts about possible training exercises into goals that will sharpen your focus and help you look deeper at your dog's training overall. Instead of focusing on what you can't do, ask yourself, "What CAN we do today?"
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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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