Service dog
Comments
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Denise1847, I love your energy! Thanks for the compliment. My wife and I both started volunteering with shelter dogs at the same time. I did it mainly to get my mind off of what was going on with politics, lol! My wife had a hard time with it. But I found it very engaging and it challenges me on many levels. I've been very grateful that I found something that brings me fulfillment. I've learned a whole lot about dogs, myself, and people in general. Not enough to train our own service dog. But I think much of what I learned working with shelter dogs could be useful for being a caregiver for my wife. Thank you for the well wishes. You're very kind.
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justbreathe2, thanks so much for your well wishes. Feel free to message me directly if you ever want to just talk/vent about stuff that's going on with your pup and husband. We aren't dealing with those issues yet. We are mostly dealing with our 13 year old dog's aging issues. We know how frustrating it can be to try to figure things out.
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Thank you Allit I appreciate that. We are also dealing with our 13 year old dog aging issues. It is frustrating for me trying to do the right things for our dog’s health and dealing with my DH memory issues and feeding him. Today’s been a better day. I am trying some different things.
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I’ve read the comments here. I don’t think anyone said this (please excuse me if someone did). Many people are given an MCI diagnosis when they actually already have dementia. It’s possible your wife is in that group. Looking back, it’s very clear our PWD had dementia, not MCI, when our family was given his MCI diagnosis. I can’t possibly imagine a service dog having any role in a dementia situation, and I live 24/7 with 2 people with significant executive functioning deficits that I support.
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If it were me I'd be looking for just a nice pet, maybe a younger one than your old guy, one who will put up with more than an elderly dog. When your old dog passes she may have a hard time with that and introducing a new one may be a good smoke bomb to throw to get through it. A low key dog who will be agreeable and a lap sitter. I don't see an actual service dog working in anything beyond MCI, and most folks don't stay in MCI long enough to utilize one even if that is an accurate diagnosis. Tagging on to housfinch, diagnosing dementia is a moving target and has severe limitations. Many people are not given the dementia diagnosis until loooooong after they clearly have it (despite our best efforts to navigate the health system, my mother was way far down the dementia rabbit hole before we finally got the Alz diagnosis - she had behaviors and eating issues, zero short term memory. She had a normal MRI when she obviously had issues and anyone who talked to her for 5 minutes could have diagnosed her.) I would caution against spending lots of time and resources on an actual service animal situation. The whole ADA thing allowing a service dog into places a pet wouldn't normally go is unlikely to work for you anyway because it won't fit that criteria with her dementia limitations, whereas a regular dog could be an "emotional support animal" but requires no special training or expenses or all the things that go into a service animal. If you had to move to an apartment together landlords cannot discriminate based on emotional support animals, so that would eliminate that issue. Again, I don't see the dog going to memory care no matter what it's status is, though they are usually allowed to visit.
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I have a diagnosis of cognitive impairment nos and I cannot think of a single service that a dog could be trained to help me with. If someone wants a dog to search for a PWD who wanders, that's putting a lot on a dog. Maybe the dog could guide a PWD home if the PWD says "take me home". But would the lost and confused PWD know to make that command? I think not.
Iris
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hi housefinch, I agree with you about the diagnosis and memory deficits. My wife is still working and very independent now. But I know from reading many comments here and from attending a support group that things can change very fast. We don’t know if a service dog is the right fit for us. Still, we are exploring the options. And getting some great advice from the groups we are networking with.
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Hi MN Chickadee, thanks for the input. I do think that it’s important for us to have a dog with us for when our older pup passes. We may just end up pursuing the ESA and therapy dog options. The reason I think service dog might work for us at least in the beginning is because of my wife’s life long experience with dogs. We know with time, that might not even play into the equation as her brain goes through its changes. For now, we are energized by the time we are spending looking into this option. I think that’s a good thing. There are so many other things we are doing to prepare that are just plain scary. At least the time we put into service dog research is more pleasant.
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Hi Iris L, thanks for your comment and your candor. I hear ya. The PWD getting lost and not even being able to give a command makes sense. A service dog would have to be trained to at least stay with the PWD even if the PWD could not give commands. There could be a tracking device on the service dog so that the pair could be found if needed. Or the service dog could be trained to alert others to the PWD’s elopement. These are just things I’m guessing about and we’ll explore with any organization we work with.
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Allit, what type of work is your DW doing? Is she getting work accommodations? Have you reviewed her latest annual employee review for warnings of poor performance? This can help you decide when she should retire.
Iris
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She’s in retail sales, working typically 2-3 days a week. She just got approved for intermittent leave that is offered through the company. She hasn’t mentioned any yet about poor performance rating. She’s told a couple of friends she works with about her diagnosis. So far, she likes her work and isn’t ready to leave.
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For the past few weeks we've been focusing more on issues other than service dog research. There are two programs near us and each has opportunities for tours and Q&A time. So we're signed up for those and will have more info about it we attend them.
I did come across this journal article about the Dementia Dog Project in Scotland. Haven't read it yet but the abstract looks like they have some good info in the article.
I do concede that for us, at the point we are at now, it's going to be extremely hard, possibly impossible for us to get a service dog. We still want to get as much info as we can. It may be that we just end up volunteering for a service dog program. Or we may just end up with an emotional support animal which I think will be pretty much just as helpful. Whatever happens, we hope the info we provide will help others who may catch things earlier than we did.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1471301219864505
Exposing the mechanisms underlying successful animal-assisted interventions for people with dementia: A realistic evaluation of the Dementia Dog ProjectAbstract
There is increasing recognition of animal-assisted interventions as a promising area of practice within health and social care for people living with dementia. However, much of the research focuses on benefits for those living in care homes and not in their own homes. The Dementia Dog Project is an innovative project that aims to support people with dementia to engage with dogs and to promote the use of dogs in dementia care in the community. The pilot project introduced a dementia assistance dog to four couples where one person had a diagnosis of dementia. The aim of this paper is to explore the mechanisms that can successfully expose the benefits of integrating dogs into dementia care by drawing on the findings of a realistic evaluation of the pilot phase of the Dementia Dog Project (2013–2015). A realistic evaluation, with its focus on context, mechanisms and outcomes illuminates why an approach may work in some situations but not in others. This makes it especially appropriate to the unique, complex experience of living with dementia and the early development stage of the programme. The analysis triangulated data from a range of primary and secondary sources including interviews with the project team, case reports, team meeting notes and transcripts of interviews with participants. The findings identified three mechanisms that help to unlock the most positive outcomes for both the participants and the dogs. These were (1) the human–animal bond, (2) relationship dynamics and (3) responsibility of caring. The findings presented within this paper provide essential information to inform and advance the planning for the use of assistance dogs for people with dementia.
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We attended a Zoom Q&A session tonight with Eyes, Ears, Nose and Paws service dog organization. The client services specialist was very nice and answered a lot of questions. We’re going to submit an application. And we’re going to volunteer with them while we go through the process. No matter what happens, I feel like this is a good thing for us. We’re working together and enjoying the process. Knowing what we have to face is pretty scary. But the things we are doing related to exploring service dog options is something that energizes us.
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We drove a few hours to do a tour of the campus for this organization
Really nice place and very well run program. Their success rate for placing dogs that they train is 80% which is extremely good. We got the chance to hang out with about half a dozen of the puppies that are in training. Saw a presentation and asked a bunch of questions. We submitted an application with them a few weeks ago and are waiting to hear back. They said that only 1 out of 80 applicants are accepted into the program. The journey continues.
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I recently saw this post. Dementia Dog is accepting applications for assistance (service) dogs. That Vimeo link in the screenshot is an info session that’s about 45 minutes long.
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My wife submitted her service dog application to Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Paws. She also had to submit two references and her neurologist had to fill out a form too.
While we’re waiting on a response we’ve been volunteering with the organization. They just had a litter so we’ve been taking shifts to play with and care for the puppies! If nothing else comes of this, the opportunity we’ve had to volunteer together and play with puppies has been worth it!
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What fun! Playing with puppies is the best!
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Commonly Used Abbreviations
DH = Dear Husband
DW= Dear Wife, Darling Wife
LO = Loved One
ES = Early Stage
EO = Early Onset
FTD = Frontotemporal Dementia
VD = Vascular Dementia
MC = Memory Care
AL = Assisted Living
POA = Power of Attorney
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