Long (really long!) awaited update

Knightley: 1 year 10 months 1 week 6 days old
Apollo: 9 months 4 days old

Apollo and Knightley together recently.

Well, it has been many months since my last update. That is because on December 26th last year I started feeling dizzy, tired, finding it hard to speak and would also pass out occasionally. I was in hospital for over three weeks, but even after then was unable to walk or do much for another couple of months. I couldn't concentrate, or even get out of bed without feeling like I would vomit or pass out.

I am somewhat better now, months later. I still feel dizzy but not as much, and I still pass out. It is quite likely I have developed narcolepsy (uncontrollable sleeping episodes), but there is still some question. I am waiting for testing up at one of the big hospitals in Sydney. I still spend quite a lot of time in bed as I can fall down suddenly, anywhere, unconscious. I am not able to sew or see to my business (although thinking about opening shop again soonish maybe??), and for a long time just stayed in bed. I've been doing physio since I got back from the hospital and can now walk reasonably well - but I still pass out and bruise myself... sometimes daily, twice a day, or only several times in a week. I wear a helmet for protection after I concussed myself when my head hit the floor. So things have been pretty terrible in that sense. In all the testing it was found out I have 'mixed' sleep apnoea, and now use a CPAP machine which has helped my terrible fatigue and has somewhat lessened my sleep episodes. However, all this passing out business is on top of my immune issues and migraines. SIGH!

Apollo learning to do an assistance retrieve for me. He's holding
a comb in this photo. He's taken to retrieving well.

So, due to all this, Apollo had to go through nearly a month with me away in hospital, and didn't deal with it well - he became pretty destructive and bored. Two months or so ago I got a mobility scooter which finally gave me the ability to get out of the house safely and take the boys for walks again. Since then I have been able to up Apollo's socialisation dramatically and he is doing well. We spend a little time inside our local shopping plaza, but spend most of the time outside it - still learning the basics of ignoring people, ignoring dogs, loud noises and strange objects. We do some basic obedience too, but mostly I'm concentrating on the basic socialisation at the moment as he missed out on a lot of it for months. I did swap him to a new vest today from a small one I've been using since he was quite young. He looks quite official in his new gear - which I had made many months ago before I got this passing out problem.

Apollo at the shops in his new gear. He is still smaller than
Knightley by quite a bit, but I hope he will be a large dog
too.

My happy Knightley with Apollo in the background. I spend
quite a bit of time with them on my bed looking after me.

Knightley is unfortunately going downhill quite quickly due to his hips. The vet hoped we'd have a couple of years of good function left, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I recently got some 'Neo Paws' boots for him to help his hips, and they do seem to help quite a bit. We love Knightley so much, and he and Apollo are the very best of friends. I think Apollo helps keep Knightley feeling young. I take Knightley out to 'work' occasionally just on a trip to the shops because he LOVES it and just gently wags at everyone. It breaks my heart that his hip dysplasia was so bad that he can't do what I trained him for. Even just a trip to the shops leaves him close to limping.

Apollo has turned out to be a natural alerter - he lets me know when I'm about to pass out. I have from between 20 seconds and two minutes warning. Enough time to find somewhere safe to sit or lie, or pull the scooter over to somewhere safe where I can pass out in peace! It is a massive blessing that he can do this, although we definitely need to work on his response to me being passed out. I want him to try to lick my face to help wake me up, and he'll do that if I'm on the floor.... but if we're in public or I'm in my wheelchair at home, he doesn't get that he has to stand on his hind legs and lick my face. But nevermind, he's only 9 months old so there is plenty more training to go.

So, things are going better than they were. Poor hubby is my carer these days, as well as the boys, and it stresses him out. But the boys are pretty great most of the time. They make me laugh (especially my clown, Apollo) and snuggle up to me when I need it. I want to get Apollo to professional standard as fast as I can since he's proven to be quite a reliable alerter. Having him with me is massive reassurance, as well as when you drop things from wheelchairs and mobility scooters it's handy to have someone/something else to pick up those things for you. We've done a bit of door closing training, and I really want to train Apollo to push those big metal buttons for me so I can cross the road. So there is a lot of work to be done. Thankfully he is super food motivated!

Truly though, all three of my boys are absolutely wonderful to me, and whilst so far this year hasn't been anything to boast about, they help me through everything day by day and never fail to make me smile. :)

Will try to write an entry now and again, but I find text hard to read (and type) due to dizziness and double vision. I hope everyone in the blogosphere has been well and is looking after themselves. *hugs to all*

A 'new' down, lifting crutches, a migraine, and a good shop trip

8 months 4 weeks 2 days old

Firstly, just a quick note - the 7th Assistance Dog Blog Carnival submission date has been extended due to lack of entries (mine was the only one!). So, if you have a service/assistance dog, if you raise puppies for programs, if you have a partner with a service/assistance dog, or if you're an interested member of the public with something to say about assistance dogs....  As long as you have access to a blog, and reply to the topic (it has changed a bit with the extension), you are very welcome to participate in the Blog Carnival. If you're interested (you should be!), go to http://playswithpuppies.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/adbc-call-for-submissions-take-2.html

I'm working on training a 'new' down with Knightley. The cue is flat!, which is nicely different from boring down. I am trying to resist luring it (using a piece of food to urge to dog into a down position) as that will make for a weaker behaviour. I did a fair bit of luring around the first time, I have to say, but I was still a clicker novice and Knightley and I weren't very good at shaping together. So now he kinda gets clicking a fair bit more, I'm going all the way back to Level 1, and getting myself a brand new shiny down with shaping. I'm also going to try (and I mean try - with his level of distraction outside), to shape it outdoors as well. This will lead to a super strong behaviour.

I did something similar with his cue to go into his crate. Once again, I had lured quite a bit and slowly as I stopped luring and started treating only, then even faded the treats..... eventually the behaviour fell apart. I mean, the cue still worked about 70% of the time, but I had to repeat myself an unacceptable number of times. So I retrained the behaviour with mostly shaping, and a new cue (instead of crate! the new behaviour was box!). He is much more reliable now, and is faster going in too. So far his flat is a much faster, more prompt behaviour than his old down, although if I need him in that position at the moment I am asking for a down until flat is completely trained.

A couple of days ago some cord loops arrived for my crutches, so that in order to lift them off the ground so that I can then get them (if they fall, or if I am forced to put them on the ground somewhere) Knightley can grab the loops. I have put some work into trying to get him to grasp the crutches themselves, but for whatever reason he has a bit of a phobia. Perhaps I have accidentally side swiped him with one before and now he's a bit leery of them? Or he just doesn't like holding cold metal in his mouth? Either way, these loops will work if all I want is him to lift them up for me. So far he is nicely happy to hold the loops, but we are taking it slowly. He has never really held anything of any weight in his mouth during our sessions - although you should see the size of the branches he likes to carry on our walks!!

I'm recovering from a migraine I got two nights ago. Pretty sure I've beaten it but it wasn't what I needed! I really hoped that Knightley would alert to my migraines naturally, as often I have little warning before they hit - sometimes quite savagely. However, so far I have seen no sign of a natural alerting ability. He certainly reacts to me and my moods when I am especially sick, but doesn't give any warning, unfortunately. I do wonder whether migraine alerting can be trained. I certainly know dogs can be trained to alert for conditions like diabetes and other blood sugar related conditions. I've heard about it for heart conditions too. I haven't actually heard about it for epilepsy though, and that is a migraine sufferers nearest comparison. These days they say migraines are indeed related to seizures. Oh well, in the future I shall look into it.

Last night I took Knightley up to (and inside, as we have permission) the local shops briefly and we really worked hard on getting a nice loose leash and keeping a solid 'service dog walk'. At first I was by myself, but then hubby joined me. It was really quite easy getting him to focus and be nice and loose without hubby there, but when hubby arrived things did go out the window a bit. He often walks a bit ahead of me (I am veeerrry slow) and so Knightley thinks he should be keeping up with his Daddy, not dawdling on with his slowpoke of a Mummy. He got rather frustrated when everytime he tried to rush forward to Daddy, he ended up further away because I would walk backwards. He did get the message though, and he settled down walking beside me, nice and solid, plod plod plod. His sniffing was at a minimum, and he was in general just very polite in his behaviour. I was very happy with him. I have been thinking about teaching a no-sniff cue... but I may talk about that later.

For the next bunch of posts I'm going to spend a bit of time answering some of the regular Google queries that I get. Some of them I already answer a bit in my posts, but I'll do some short posts answering them explicitly because there are obviously people looking for information they are struggling to find - which I can answer. So when I leave my normal format, don't be surprised.

Wish me luck! Temperament testing time again, dog alerting to migraines?

Pre pickup 7 weeks old

So we're off on our temperament testing jaunt tomorrow. Cross fingers this time we find the puppy we want. All this travelling, extra nights everywhere has turned it into a rather exhausting not to mentioned expensive venture! It will all be worth it if in 9 days I bring home what I hope will turn out to be my assistance dog. I have to keep up my standards though. I know that if they aren't suitable - then they aren't suitable. I can't just hope and take a semi ok puppy. I want to start with the best possible blank canvas. The pup will certainly change as he grows up, but so long as I start with a pup with no perceivable problems and lots of positives at least I am giving myself the best shot at this.

I have Control Unleashed by Leslie McDevitt to finish on the trip, and also Bones Would Rain from the Sky: Deepening our Relationship with Dogs by Suzanne Clothier. I'm not going to take a novel, just to make sure I read doggy stuffs.

I've also been wondering about the possibility of the dog alerting to my migraines. I know it's a bonkers idea, but I can actually trigger a migraine if I want (lol lol lol lol never thought I would *want* one lol lol lol), so I've been wondering whether I could train some sort of alert. I was reading about how they get people to breath on a cotton swab when their blood sugar is very low in order to train diabetic alert dogs (then bag and freeze the swab for training in the future). I guess I would have to actually *get* a migraine to train with it. It's a bonkers idea, but I could probably maybe abort the migraine if I knew it was coming with medication. My migraines are primarily cervico-genic (ie, caused by neck problems), so by doing certain things to my neck I usually cause a migraine. Would it be worth it to cause a series of minor migraines in order to train an alert? Is it even possible??? I'm not sure.

Please let me know if you have any knowledge of training alerts like this. Is it possible, or am I going to have to rely on innate alerting behaviour that may or may not be there in the particular dog? I will definitely train migraine response, as sometimes they are very bad.... but alerting is a whole other ball game.

I've also been thinking about my many medical appointments, and taking the dog to them. Australia doesn't have anything like the ADA hotline like the US does. There is no one to phone to find out my rights. I find myself going to appointments, often at hospitals maybe twice a month. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I wonder how people here in this country would take that. Especially considering this dog would be owner trained. I've *never* seen an assistance dog in a hospital. Come to that, I've never seen an assistance dog here at all. My husband saw one in our local shops the other day, so they do exist. I'd definitely have some fights on my hands, taking it into medical surrounds. I guess I would put together a laminated sheet to educate people, and possibly a small batch of 'handouts' so I can show the relevant parts of the Disability Discrimination Act. I don't much look forward to that part though.

The thing that gets my blood boiling however, is that owner trained dogs can't travel in the cabin of planes in this country (well, very occasionally they can travel on Qantas, but you have to have stellar qualifications as a trainer). I know that there are some challenges to that under way, but without some sort of countrywide PAT (public access test) for owner trained teams, I can't see us being allowed in the cabins.

Anyway, enough of me complaining for now, I have stuff to do so that we can get away tomorrow afternoon. I have changed my volunteering day to Friday, so that means we will be short on time tomorrow for getting ready to leave, so I better finish up stuff now!

Wish me luck!!!