Dog Bless You

Often times people wonder if we pick our pets or if they pick us. In this case Yvette felt that Blondie chose her. “When I met her she walked pretty easy on a leash for me and she sat down and leaned into me as if to say she approved of me.” This simple action became the tie that turned a former shelter dog into a service dog in training.

Yvette served in the Army for 11 years. She was a mechanic for the first six years and then moved on to specializing in IT and logistics administration. She served in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Blondie is a yellow lab that was placed with Yvette in February. They starter training in March and already passed the Canine Good Citizen Test (CGC).  She is taking to training very well and Yvette feels confident they will graduate in the fall.  

For now when Yvette has to leave Blondie at home she waits by the door until she returns, at which time she immediately rolls over so Yvette can scratch her belly when she arrives. Soon they will pass the stage in training where Blondie will be able to accompany Yvette everywhere and she won’t be stuck waiting at the door for her to come home.

An Update From Luther, Guide Dog in Training

It’s my last week of class at the university! I’m just checking out the UGA newspaper, The Red & Black. Going to miss visiting campus.

Robin DeBates and Brigadoon Service Dog “Nugget”

You know how when you live with a child or someone who is aging you don’t see the subtle changes because you’re with them every day? Living with a service dog feels kind of like that. The incremental changes add up slowly over time. There will be milestones. And eventually there will be a day when you look around and think, “Hey. I have a life. I feel good. This is really, really nice.”

One of the immediate things I noticed about living full-time with a service dog is that I was never alone. Humans, even with good intentions, have other tasks and needs to attend to. A service dog, however, has the primary function of paying attention to the human in the dog’s care. 

Over time, that constant companionship turns into a form of reliability and trust. Learning how to read the dog’s body language has been instrumental in helping me retool my responses to the environment. For whatever reason, my brain thought it needed to stay on high alert almost if not all the time. I have learned how read my dog’s cues about whether or not a situation required me to be on alert, paying attention, or just present without needing to constantly scan for potential threats. Ratcheting down that adrenaline response allowed my brain to start focusing on other things, like getting better.

I also found that living with a service dog helped me to regulate my sleep-wake cycle, increase my physical activity, interact more with other people, and just plain leave the house more often. These things are all really key in regulating not just physical health, but emotional connection and social interaction, too. 

Sometimes it can be really difficult, even still three and a half years later, to have a lot of people want to talk to, pet, and even, yes, feed the dog. Oh, and “access challenges” too… It requires a lot of patience and practice to feel skillful in being assertive yet calm in these situations, where someone is doing or saying something that is either out of your comfort zone or just plain wrong (i.e., refusing entry to their business because of the service dog). I think all this practice has helped me to get better at generally speaking up in situations that feel uncomfortable. The more I practice managing myself, even though my heart is pounding, the more reliable I know my responses will be… and having a wonderfully soft fluffy love dog to pet through all of it helps regulate and recover, as well.

Living with a service dog is definitely a full-time, life changing commitment. It makes me visible as a person with a disability in a way that I otherwise would not be visible. It generates comments, some positive and some negative. It changes, in some ways, the types of employment I will have because realistically, I am not willing to work anywhere that does not want the team of me and my service dog. And the fur… it’s a better side effect than the side effects I got from prescription medications, but the fur is ubiquitous. And totally worth it.

This little guide dog puppy in training is going to have a very big job someday.

Happy Mother’s Day! Have you paid a Mother’s Day visit to mama Gucci? Let her know what a great job she’s doing.