My Service Dog

I have been diagnosed with major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative identity disorder.  Well, OK, I’ve been involved in the mental health system for a long time, and I’ve been diagnosed with lots of other things as well.  It’s not uncommon to see one doctor and get one diagnosis, then see another doctor and get another diagnosis.  But these are my current diagnoses, and the conditions I think I actually have.  These are the disabilities I want a service dog to help me with.

I’m still working out the specific tasks I want my future service dog to be trained to do.  I’m discussing the issue with my therapist and with the professional dog trainer I will be working with.  Here are a list of problems I experience due to my disabilities and some ideas of how a service dog might help me.

Anxiety attacks.  I sometimes have severe anxiety attacks, or at least I guess they are anxiety attacks, when I feel overwhelmed and usually start crying really hard and can’t think straight.  I have medication I can take that helps me calm down.  However, when I’m having one of these attacks, I usually don’t think about taking the medication.  If my partner is around, he reminds me to take it, and then I can open the bottle and get out the pill and take it.  But my partner isn’t always around.  A service dog could be trained to recognize the symptoms of an anxiety attack, pick up a pill bottle (the bottle would have to be left in a place where a dog could reach it) and bring it to me.

Anxiety in crowded places or any time I feel overwhelmed.  I get anxious in crowded places.  I plan to do my grocery shopping during the day and never on weekends, so the store is usually not very crowded.  But sometimes it is crowded, and I might feel trapped in the aisles with people blocking both ends of an aisle, and I might feel overwhelmed by all the items on my shopping list.  A service dog could be trained to recognize the signs that I am starting to get too anxious, find the nearest exit, and lead me outside where I can calm down and then either go home or go back into the store and finish my shopping.  A service dog could also be trained to position itself in such a way that other people didn’t get super close to me, like if I am waiting in line to pay for my groceries.

Fear of the dark.  This probably sounds silly, but it goes along with the PTSD and it can be a big deal.  Sometimes at night I have to sleep with the lights on.  Other times, I’m OK turning them off to go to sleep, and sometimes I actually prefer to sleep with them off because sometimes the light seems to bother my eyes at night.  However, I sometimes wake up from nightmares during the night, feeling terrified, and need a light turned on.  A service dog could be trained to turn on the lights on when commanded to do so. 

Also, when I come home alone to a dark house at night, it’s very scary for me to walk into the dark house.  Sometimes it’s scary just to walk into a dark room, like if I need to go to the bathroom at night.  This is much less of a problem when my partner is home but it’s a big issue if I’m alone at night.  A service dog could be trained to go into rooms ahead of me and turn on the lights.

Fear of intruders.  The PTSD also makes me afraid that someone is in my house sometimes, especially at night.  A service dog could be trained to search the house and let me know if someone is there that doesn’t belong.  I know intellectually that the dog is not going to find anyone, but it would relieve the intense fear for the dog to tell me all is well

Self-injurious behaviors.  I had to think for a while about whether I even wanted to post about this here.  It’s not something I talk to a lot of people about.  I think most people that know me are aware of the issue, though; we just don’t talk about it much.  I have a long history of self-injurious behaviors, like cutting myself.  It doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen sometimes.  A service dog could be trained to interrupt that kind of behavior.  I’m not sure yet what I would want the dog to do to interrupt that behavior, although I have a couple of ideas.  But it could be trained to do something.

Finding the car.  I know lots of people have trouble finding their cars in big parking lots, but I think sometimes it’s worse for me.  I think it’s related to my dissociative identity disorder.  Sometimes I have no memory whatsoever of parking the car and no idea in what direction I might have parked, and end up having to walk up and down the parking lot until I spot my car.  A service dog could be trained to find the car for me.

Back pain, making it hard to bend over.  This is not caused by depression or PTSD, it’s caused by a herniated disc and muscle atrophy.  It’s a big problem, though.  I will be having a medial branch nerve block in a couple weeks and then going to physical therapy, and hopefully that will relieve the pain and solve this problem.  But if it doesn’t, a service dog could be trained to pick up things from the floor for me if I drop something.

Dizziness when I first stand up.  This is not caused by depression or PTSD, either.  It could be caused by one of the medications I take for depression, but I don’t think it is.  I don’t know what causes it, though.  My blood pressure tends to run low anyway, and when I first stand up, it often drops sharply.  I get super dizzy and feel like I’m going to faint.  I need something to hold on to.  A service dog could be trained to stand beside me and help me keep my balance.

There are some other ways in which I think a dog would benefit me, but these aren’t really trained tasks.  They are things a pet dog would do just as well as a service dog.  For instance, I have a lot of trouble sleeping and I am hoping that having a dog in bed with me will help me sleep.  I also really need to get more exercise than I currently get, and I think that having a dog that needs to go for walks will give me the motivation to be more physically active.  I feel certain I will walk the dog even if I don’t feel like it; I always feed and otherwise care for my cats, even if I don’t particularly feel like it.  But I also think taking walks might be more fun with a dog than just walking by myself.