Deciding to have a service dog or not
A little over a year ago Veronica and I decided to raise a
service dog. Partially we made this decision because we didn't feel we could
make the 10 to 15 year commitment, financially, lifestyle or otherwise, that you're
looking at when you own a dog.
Kenzie spends most of her time with me. As you may know, I
do have a disability. However, it never occurred to us that I would benefit
from having a service dog and we had no intention of training her for me. West
Coast Teams trains mobility assistance dogs. Having a disability and using a
scooter just allowed mobility training to happen all the time.
I would not have described myself as needing a mobility
assistance dog. I can pull off my own socks and jacket. I can get the phone or
the remote. I can reach out and touch the button to cross the street or open a
door or the elevator. I can bend down to pick things up. I can open the fridge
or turn on the light. Of course many of these things mean getting out of my
scooter if I'm using it. But I can do that.
In terms of mobility assistance, with fibromyalgia, there
are always worse days and then these things are very helpful. Also, any energy
saved is energy I can use for other things.
If I don’t have to get out of my scooter because Kenzie will take care
of whatever it is, maybe I have the energy left to do something else, something
important to me.
But mostly I can and
do these things myself.
BUT THEN about six months ago we realized that although I
don't feel a lot better I am functioning at a higher level than I was before we
got Kenzie. I leave the house more, I spend more time outside, I see and speak
to more people. There is no quantitative
medical test to show I have a disability, how severe it is, or how it is
affecting my life. Many of my symptoms
are subjective. But all of the things
Kenzie helps me with are concrete, the type of measures that doctors, insurance
companies and government offices like. So we started to think about whether I
would benefit from having a service dog, from keeping Kenzie after her training
was complete. Maybe having it be the
concrete factors also made it easier for me to accept the difference as
legitimate, too.
I didn't tell very many people about this possibility, that
I may keep Kenzie or have a service dog. Of course months ago when I realized
that maybe it was a good thing for me, it was much easier to avoid a decision.
Kenzie's behavior still needed a lot of work. My rationale was I couldn't tell
how well we would fit together until I saw how Kenzie was closer to the end of
her training. While she isn't completely trained now she has calmed down a lot
and the end is in sight.
In the meantime I have spent a lot of time thinking and
discussing with V why or how Kenzie helps me. Being at home with me she helps
prevent isolation. Being outside the home with me she does the same thing.
Strangers talk to each other when one of them has a dog. Eventually the
strangers become friends. I make better decisions to take care of myself
because I will need to take care of Kenzie. She interrupts me if I am focusing
too much on an activity and overdoing it. She prompts me to do things that are
good for me like sleep or spend time outside.
Somehow it is easier to make decisions that are good for her and just
happen to also be good for me, than it is to make those decisions just for my
own good.
It's hard to describe how having Kenzie helps me at an
appointment or meeting, in a restaurant or at a social event. Of course even
these events are tiring and having her with me keeps me from over doing it by
giving me a reminder and great excuse for leaving. She can also provide an
excuse in other ways, when it is easier to give her as a reason than to give my
health as the reason for a decision. She gives me a focus and something to pay
attention to rather than getting stressed about something or focusing on my
physical condition. Sometimes if I am
feeling anxious about something we are going to do to, thinking of having
Kenzie with me lessens my anxiety.
So why not to have a service dog?
Months ago I had a conversation with a person with a service
dog for mental health, specifically anxiety. It is an invisible disability just
as mine is when I'm not in my scooter. Because I am relatively young and look
relatively healthy, it doesn’t occur to most people that I have health issues
that interfere with daily life. While it
it is rude to ask somebody, often a stranger, "well, what's wrong with
you?" Having a service dog and an invisible disability gets you this
question quite often. Without your service dog (or scooter) you can easily avoid
the whole conversation or choose to disclose or not disclose it. This is harder
to do when more people talk to you with the service dog and then start asking
questions.
Recently I have realized that another part of my reluctance
to accept a service dog permanently has to do with both how I think I am
perceived and what I think I deserve. Sometimes this is related to my
appearance and having an invisible disability while other times it is in
comparison to others. For instance, I often feel bad about taking an accessible
parking spot when an elderly person might need it. Or zooming past an elderly person when I am on
my scooter and they are making very slow (probably painful) progress with a
cane or a walker. In my head it seems to
be a question of how disabled I am and therefore how much consideration I
deserve. But sometimes I am uncomfortable because of how disabled I think I am
perceived to be. This is complicated; hard
to talk about and hard to explain.
It took me a really long time to accept the word
disability. Partly I got used to it as
it is applied to other people in my volunteer life. Even when I did start using
it as it applied to myself, I explained it in my own head that it was just
simpler, a quicker, easier label to use in conversation than to explain what my
health and my life are actually like. I
still don’t think of myself as disabled or having a disability, and I don’t
necessarily think that’s a problem. I am
a just a person, an individual, and each individual’s life is different. Sweeping labels highlight a small similarity
in a group and ignore huge differences.
It also took me a long time to accept using a wheelchair or
scooter. I spent years rarely walking
anywhere or getting any exercise and therefore rarely leaving the house,
especially alone, because walking causes me so much pain and that pain takes away
the enjoyment from whatever I am
doing. The backlash of pain and fatigue
in my body would last for a week or more.
And throughout all of this I was cranky and emotional. Partly I thought this would end and I could
have all of those parts of my life back – everything outside of my house, I
guess. But it never did and eventually I
came to realize that the only way I was going to get outside my house was to
use a mobility device. It was an incredible
feeling of freedom to be ‘released’. But
only after I got over a bunch of stuff. Now,
because I use my scooter, I not only get out and do things, but when I DO need
to walk a bit I can tolerate it better and I recover quicker.
But still, there are some people for whom a service dog
literally means they can live by themselves or leave the house by themselves.
That is not me so I am struggling with whether it would be selfish to keep a
fully trained service dog when it could help somebody else whose situation is
so much more difficult than mine. In my
head, I am not THAT disabled. I some
ways this still amuses me that I can think this way after being off of work for
this disability for more than 10 years, with no end in sight.
And then of course there is the public perception. If I have a service dog, I must be that
disabled.
V is not generally a glass half-full kind of person.
However, when we talked about this she pointed out that turning this aspect
around means legitimizing. When I need accommodation due to my illness I have a
service dog therefore I must be that disabled and Kenzie legitimizes my request
and my need.
The politically correct answer, if somebody says they have a
disability that you can't see, is to simply accept the statement. If the person wants to tell you more about
their condition, they will. However, there are still a lot of times when people
who see me as a reasonably young and capable looking individual question
whether I have a disability. Would having a service dog make them less likely
to question? I'm not really sure. And
would this make a difference anyway, anywhere except for in my own head?
I know all the responses to my concerns about how disabled I
am or I am perceived to be or what I deserve.
I know the logic. But I also know
from my emotional reactions to situations that somewhere in my heart I still
don’t believe them all the time.
The "loosest" description I have seen of who could
use a service dog is anyone who's health, well-being and independence would be
increased by a service dog. (Another consideration of course is whether they
can care for and handle a service dog.) By
that first definition, since I am functioning more highly, especially in a
number of categories that are considered especially healthy, maybe I should
keep Kenzie. Maybe I should have a service dog.
A lot of the reasons not to have any dog, the resons why V
and I decided to foster a service dog instead, apply to not having a fully
trained service dog as well: the commitment, the cost, the lifestyle changes.
It is a tough decision to make.
