A Decade of Difference

This post is for the Fourth Assistance Dog Blog Carnival. For more information on what the Assistance Dog Blog Carnival (ADBC) is see the post,  About the Assistance Dog Blog Carnival at the After Gadget blog.

When I first heard the topic for this carnival, The Difference, I could think of a lot of subjects to write on almost immediately. I wanted this posting however, to take on a different theme than my previous one did which focused on the medical heart-break in my life with my first service dog Chimette (Met). I also did not want to focus on comparing the differences between my two combo trained service dogs, Chimette and Thane. I had began a post sharing about the two different sides of me- the pre service dog me, and the post service dog me. It just never went anywhere though. I realized the reason- it is that I am meant to share the medical lessons my dogs teach me with the assistance dog community- so here goes...

My boys have both been exceptional service dogs. Each one has taught me things about myself, particularly in my ability to persevere through trials that no team should ever have to endure. In this entry, I hope to not focus so much on the actual medical *drama* side of the equation, but in the difference in which I have responded to/ handled it because of the opportunities that differ for me today, over a decade after Chimette's journey into the unknown began.

Thane was to be my new start; a healthy start. I had huge dreams of how different things would be- where we would go, things we would accomplish. Though many of my dreams have come to pass over the past three years we have been together, not everything has been as I anticipated it would be.

When Chimette began having seizures, I was a basket case. I was a babe in terms of internet access and certainly was not racing to google to find research or to yahoogroups or other forum sites to find lists for support, information, and stability in his condition. All of this came later. It came because Met was not an easy case to find answers for. It came because I was not ready to quit seeking answers when vets felt we had achieved about the best anyone could hope for- especially when having two of the most difficult breeds to control when it came to canine seizures, in one body.

Though I had the support of people walking the same or similar paths as me, had research to cling to, had answers to the causes of canine seizures, and even discovered that Met's problem was vaccinosis; our partnership changed the very moment I witnessed his first seizure. It became one where stress and concern for Met's stability left me always asking myself what impact doing various access outings would have on Met, rather than one where I just headed out to do my errand without a care in the world.

Recently, after chasing symptoms for over a year and a half, Thane was diagnosed with chronic Lyme Disease. It was a bombshell to put it mildly. Had it not been for my good friend Sharon at the After Gadget blog being so proactive about the presence of Lyme Disease *EVERYWHERE*, I might have never tested Thane. Though it was one of the hardest things I have had to face in a very long time, I found myself recently looking at how differently I reacted to not only Thane's official diagnosis, but his first seizure that told me something was very wrong.

When Thane had his first seizure, a partial one, I did not trust myself. What I mean is, it was so small that had I not had the decade of living with seizures before, I might never have realized what I was witnessing. With Met, I can still tell you the day and time of his very first seizure. I tried hard to pretend his seizure did not happen- that if I ignored what I witnessed, it would just be as though it was a sleeping nightmare and that would be the end of it. With Thane, I did not even write the date down, though I know it happened within a week of when I got online and placed an order for Taurine for him. Before placing that order, I also did a bit of research to determine which road of supplementation I should try with him. With Met, I never would have considered such a thing or trusted myself to make an informed decision.

There is another very big difference between my dealings of my two boys- for Met, I was always worried- always stressing over him. I know it placed an enormously unhealthy amount of pressure not just on my own health, but on Met's as well. In the first few months with Thane in my life, I made things pretty stressful too, but a read on the impact of stress in the book Shock to the System by Catherine O'Driscoll seemed to nip that in the bud. I won't say that I was not panicked when I got Thane's diagnosis. This would be an outright falsehood. This time would be different I told myself. I was not going to let long-term unnecessary and unhealthy stress impact our future.

I already had some very good resources which I gathered in my attempts to point another person with a Lyme positive dog in the right direction. All that was left was to begin to apply them to my own life- to Thane. I got a crash course from Sharon in Lyme Disease over that weekend following the positive test results. Over a decade ago, this kind of education would have been unthinkable. I don't think we realize just how lucky we are to live where we do, in the decade we live, until something like this happens.

Though I had a couple horrible days in my fight to help Thane recently, and though I learned some even harder news that pointed towards an impact on the liver after under two weeks on meds, I am more equipped with Thane to handle what may come our way without putting an undauntingly high amount of stress on either of our immune systems.

Today, I don't know what the future will hold for Thane and I. He may be treated effectively and work a long productive career. I know however, that realistically we may not have the duration I would love to have, that any team would love to have, simply because Lyme Disease causes immune dysfunction even in the best of cases where long term health complications could side-line this team permanently. With Met, such a prospect would have sent me into a *frozen* state of panic merely by considering crossing the street without my right-hand man. Today that would not be the case.Today I have the skill and resources I need to navigate in public solo, when the circumstances warrant it.

A decade ago, or even during the last few years of my partnership with Met, retirement would have been the biggest *unthinkable* possibility. Today I have high hopes for Thane and I, but at the same time, I have a bigger sense of realism. I know in all likelihood, one of the impacted systems in his body, will tell me/ us that despite how awesome Thane is at his job or even how hard it would be to ask him to step down, that it could very well happen, it could be the right call, the one that shows the love I have for him.

I choose to only think about the day before us. It's one day where, when we wake up in the morning, I will have or will be able to seek out the tools that give Thane the best options for a positive come back. I never felt this way with Met. I always looked to the future in the sense that, until the last month of his life, I never contemplated our partnership from what was the right call for Met, but instead from what was the right call for Karyn.

This time it's different. Thane is mostly side lined at the moment as we work with a specialist to find not only the right drug regimen to eradicate his Lyme Disease, but to work on healing his liver. One day in the not to distant future, I strongly believe that this living nightmare that we are walking through, will become a passing memory of which many lessons have been learned.

If you come away from this with nothing else, my hope is that you will not only realize that Lyme Disease is not only a North-East USA disease, but that it's a disease your service dog should be tested for annually- even if you live in the Pacific Northwest, in Hawaii, in Australia. If you come away believing that Lyme Disease is just as important to test for as Heartworm, then Thane and I will have made a difference in your lives.

Saving Lives or Harming Them for the Long-Haul

After my first partnership was limited at best by severe vaccinosis, I don't hesitate to speak my mind with people- especially those who are completely oblivious and believe that vets would not administer vaccines if they were not safe. My partnership with Met and even the early part of my partnership with Thane prove otherwise.

I've read countless articles, books, and anything I could get my hands on over the years as I worked on changing my own mindset about vaccines. That is that they do far more harm than good for both people and our animals. I honestly would rather lose my dog from one of the diseases that we are indoctrinated to vaccinate against rather than to have them go through a decade of torture before the vaccines finally make it impossible to rally back.

Today on a vaccine list, I read a link that had been shared for an amazing article, The Purdue Vaccination Studies and Auto-Antibodies by Catherine O'Driscoll author of  the books, What Vets Don't Tell You About Vaccines and Shock to the System (both superb books and for my print disabled followers both are available on bookshare). If everyone could take this data to heart, shout it from the rooftops, stand up to vets who continue to do booster vaccines- or better yet to those who want to vaccinate their healthy puppy in the first place, life for our dogs could be so different.

My gut feeling is that after reading this article, if you aren't ready to do away with vaccines (and change your current vet if need be), then to me it feels like you are saying *First Do Harm* instead of *First Do No Harm*. I learned the hard way just how harmful vaccines can be when I watched my beautiful service dog fade away after booster vaccinations. I can't go through that again- nor will I. The lesson plan took- I learned exactly what I needed to through Chimette's journey. I hope you don't ever have to walk a journey like that.

Chimette's Story: When Vaccines Go Haywire

Life could not have been more perfect. It was the spring of 1998 and just as plants were blossoming with the new season so was my teamwork with my first service dog, Chimette. Our partnership, further training, and work were all coming in sinc. The more exposure to the community, college life, shopping, time with friends that Met experienced, the better he was able to make quick decisions that made my life safer as I traveled independently in my community. I was coming alive; feeling that I could do anything I set my mind to all thanks to the love, skill, and devotion of my gentle boy.

After a veterinary checkup filled with more vaccinations than I was comfortable with having administered all at once, I was left watching my service dog slip away from me. He became afraid of everything- any sudden movement, anything that loomed over his height, he withdrew from touch, he no longer could handle all the unpredictability of service dog life. I imagine now the experience was not so different from what a parent sees as their child slips into autism. One difference being that I had come to rely upon Met for so much.

Though, I came to realize that Mets falling apart before my eyes seemed so much like the young dog he was after I adopted him, at this point I did not make the connection yet to the fact that the very vaccines I wanted to wait on were responsible for Met's collapse and our lost partnership, temporary as it was. Of course while presented with it, I had no idea whether or not the problems we were encountering would be temporary or permanent. The vets were no help in any of the process- not with a cause, and certainly not with elimination of the problem or rehabilitative techniques to work with. It was up to me to help Met if I could.

I took an incomplete in my coursework and began the long arduous process of working through the myriad of symptoms and difficulties that presented themselves for us. From shadows, to statues, to trees, to kids on bicycles, skates, and skateboards. At times he literally crab walked if he had to go near statues or trees. It was quite sad to see a dog who loved to raise his leg to a big tree, literally crumble at their presence. I knew I probably had seen the end of our partnership at least where public access was concerned. All that remained was seeing just how much I could rehabilitate him. I never considered, however, the possibility that this could just be the way he was going to be. He had some of these problems to a lesser degree when I adopted him (thought to be from lack of socialization), so I believed that we could conquer whatever *this* was. If he came out of it once, then just maybe twice could happen as well.

Over the next few months, life slowly returned to normal. With the help of a clicker (before I even was aware of clicker training), I re-conditioned Met to the various obstacles in our life- things that exposure could not be prevented unless he stayed in seclusion within our apartment  for the rest of his life. I gave him consistency and built his exposures to the intolerables- changing them into normal common occurrences he accepted once more. I will admit that there were times that I got exasperated, pushed too much too fast, and probably as a result slowed the rehabilitative path. No one would have known that we had encountered such a devastating blow to our partnership after these few months were behind us. Met was not only working much more effectively in our home environment, but his skill level in the community, shopping and walks on the college campus, had become more on target and focused.

After this experience, I opted to work with another veterinarian in the practice. He was more down to earth and listened to his clients. We had seen him enough to know that he was caring not just for the animals but that in our situation as a service dog team, he would understand about how changes in Met could very well have an impact on my functionality as well. Its just too bad that he was not the vet we saw that spring day when Met had his annual exam. Five months after Mets *meltdown* though having him in our corner was one of the best things going for us when the seizures began.

It happened out of the blue- there was no noticeable pre-ictal phase. One moment Met and I were sitting in our bedroom and the next moment he had been catapulted skyward, his body thrust up and down like a kangaroo- muscles so rigid and limbs contorted. It felt like I was in the midst of a nightmare. Nothing this horrible could really be taking place- and yet it was. The first time it happened I was quite literally in denial. I gathered him up on my lap nonetheless and had a good cry. This was the worst possible thing I could have done for him though. As I'd learn later, acting as normal as possible once the seizure passes is as important (if not more so) with canine seizures as it is with people. I was scared though. I was scared of what would become of Met. I was scared of dealing with my disabilities without his assistance as I lived my life in the community.

Many dogs have very mild problems once all the tests are in and meds and triggers handled properly. For a service dog though, this usually spells out retirement. A retirement neither I nor Met was ready for. But I had that great vet in my corner- a vet who believed in both of us and our partnership. Now it was just a matter of determining if we could be one of those teams that made it. Could we gain the control of Mets seizures that would be necessary for him to safely carry out his job? or would he be one of many service dogs whose job ends as a result of a myriad of diseases, including seizure disorders?

To most in the service dog community, the answer would be clear- the mere thought of working with a dog that had even the slightest thing out of balance would be unconceivable. This is far from a little thing if control is not easily achieved though. I could go through the entire process here of how we found a proper diagnosis for Met, but that is something best left for a book. Through his history, his triggers, even his issues with various fillers and drugs it became all to clear that Met had vaccinosis a topic covered with wonderful skill, personal experience, and support in the books What Vets Don't Tell you About Vaccines and Shock to the System. Vaccinosis is more understood and accepted today in 2011, but in 1998 the only hope for those afflicted was avoidance of triggers and homeopathy. Its sad to me that what was misconstrued at adoption to be a lack of socialization, the meltdown in the spring following his vaccinations, and now seizures- after months of virus replication in his system from the vaccines might all have been avoided had his system not been overloaded in the first place.

In hindsite the answer seems easy in regards to his service dog status- retirement. I did not have the luxury of looking at things from a hindsite perspective though. With a, then slower paced lifestyle, I chose to try and gain control not knowing at the time that the cause was vaccinosis. I worked closely with my vet during the early medication adjustment months. Though occasional break throughs happened, they tended to happen at home. Through the help of the K9epilepsy group and Beyond Vaccination on yahoogroups, as well as EPIL-K9 I was able to discover many helps, answers to my questions, and a release for the anxiety I had been keeping pent up inside of me. As a result of the control we were able to achieve, we continued our partnership. By then I had a sedentery lifestyle so retirement was not a necessity for us. Met and I worked together close to another 9 years after that. It wasn't always filled with perfect control, but it was a wonderful decade of love, lessons learned and taught, and eventually of letting go.

What I Feel, He Reveals

If there's anything I appreciate about my Border Collie boys, it is that they have made me a better trainer and handler because of who they are/ were by making me aware of my own state of mind, stress level, and tension.

Throughout the service dog community forums, one topic that comes up frequently is how our emotions travel down the leash to our dogs. In my opinion, this effect can't be seen better in any other breed than the Border Collie.

Many dogs let changes in their handlers dispositions or emotions just roll right off of them- be it tension, illness, emotional variations from sad to angry; elated to calm. This however isn't the case of every dog partnered with a disabled handler. Our service dogs vary from soft to hard in both methods of training and how they handle the events of life. These events include the emotions, we as trainers and handlers, send down the lead- often times things we are totally unaware of unless our dogs tension and relaxation status in harness fluctuates from one day to the next- or even from one moment to another in extreme situations.

Both of my boys have been soft dogs. Though in most situations I can without a doubt say that Met was the softer of the two, there are circumstances where this is so *not the case*. Those circumstances revolve around what I am sending down the lead to Thane.

In our first year together, life was anything but smooth or stress free. First, I was grieving the loss of a decade long partnership with the most awesome service dog. Second, I was learning to adapt to my progressive disabilities without Met's assistance. Finally, I was trying to get to know this new kid on the block who was definitely *NOT* Met. One can only imagine the emotions that I was giving off as I tried to figuratively put one foot in front of the other while trying to teach this bouncy, energetic, nine month old country transplant that a leash and walking on it loosely was a concept he *MUST* get *YESTERDAY*. I was anything but calm and collected and it showed in him.

Those early months are a blurr quite honestly. We somehow got through those nightmarish times of training Thane to go busy on lead, LLW, direction training for guide work, and were able to move onto harness work. I continued to set our partnership back, however, through my roller coaster grief, expectations, and tensed up leash communications at best. Though I would not have wanted to be going it alone dogless, I know (thanks to hindsite) that I shared way too much negative energy down the lead in our process to become a team.

I would work with Thane one day and have a positively awesome experience. He would be pulling into harness at a perfect tension for my needs; walking and guiding smoothly as we went along. It would seem we had finally arrived. We might have this kind of experience for a day or two or if we were really lucky, a week. Then with no reason at all, or so it seemed, we would be ten paces back. It would be a struggle to walk one block at a comfortable harness tension. I was quite honestly baffled at the changes in Thane. I just could not get my head around these bizarre differences. It was like there were two versions of him and I never knew each day as we rolled out the front door which version of him I would be working with.

I was scanning two books for Bookshare at the time. Canine Adventures, Fun Things to Do with Your Dog, and Shock to the System. Both of these books had areas devoted to stress. Shock to the System especially had me questioning my own status, not just Thanes. When we would have a rough patch of training or work, I began to check in with myself. What I mean by this is that I would do a check on just how I was feeling and especially reacting- physically, emotionally, stress-wise. What I discovered more times than not, when Thane was *off-kilter* as I began calling these high strung times, it was directly linked to some aspect of my own being.

Though it has not always been easy for me to let things roll off my back, for our partnership, I strove to learn how to do just that. In this process, I have become a better trainer and handler by quite literally seeing what I was feeling. Thane has essentually been a guide through more than just my blindness. He has taught me how to be healthier by letting the things go that just are not important enough to hold onto. He has, in his simple Border Collie way, set me free from myself, allowing us to have a partnership where I see a reflection of myself revealed in red and white.