I have accomplished next to nothing today, and I have no idea why. I just don’t have any motivation. I’m assuming this is just leftover exhaustion from being sick last week and then pushing myself this week, but it’s still frustrating.
The good news is that I will be two days into my spring break by this time next week. I was planning to spend the whole break training a litter of puppies, but I got word today that they were transferred to a shelter in Albuquerque, so I’ll probably use the time to read the new book I bought on training service dogs.
I’m planning to spend this summer teaching Ramona and Marley to recognize the scent of an incoming migraine and alert me when they smell it. This is more of an educational exercise for me (I sometimes get questions from people who are trying to train their own service dogs, and right now, I don’t know enough about the process to help them), but I do wake up with bloodcurdling migraines once or twice a week, and it would be a wonderful luxury if one of my dogs could cold-nose me into consciousness a few minutes before the pain hits so I could take medicine to head it off at the pass.
I’m going to work with both Ramona and Marley because A.) I’m not sure who will be better at the job, and B.) it will give me a chance to see how the training techniques work for two very different dogs with very different personalities.
If I had to guess, I’d say Marley, who is a very confident little dog, will be better at the socialization component, but Ramona, who is obsessed with her nose, will be better at actually detecting migraines. The Pest has already demonstrated the ability to detect low blood sugar — something we discovered one morning when I forgot to eat breakfast before setting out on a walk with her — but she has a history of anxiety, and I’m not sure how well she’ll be able to override it.
The good news for me is that there is no scenario in which I lose. At worst, I’ll have an excuse to spend more time with my dogs, which is always worthwhile. If one of them excels at both the socialization and the task training, I’ll end the summer with a service dog. If one of them excels at the socialization but not the task training, I’ll end the summer with a Canine Good Citizen. If one of them excels at the task training but not the socialization, I’ll end the summer with a pet who knows she needs to tell me if I start to smell like migraine — which will still be helpful, because at least 90 percent of my headaches hit between 1:30 and 5:30 a.m., when I’m home and in bed. And in every scenario, the dogs will benefit from having some extra attention and training.
That sounds like a recipe for a great summer.
Emily
Red Fork Hippie 