Shooby-Do-Wah, Shooby-Do-Wah, Waddaya Gonna Do?

We've been staying busy the last few weeks with trying to get the house and yard ready for a dog and organized before school starts, visiting with family and friends, and general life.

We had a lovely time last week getting together with Overseas Musical Family and their new baby, and I was so thrilled to be able to clean out my stash and help them by donating a stroller and carseat.

Morning came over on Thursday and helped us look at and daydream about dogs online. Yesterday my sister Sparrow had a birthday party/game night. Last night JT and her family came over, and we had a lovely time having dinner, visiting and playing Carcassonne. At the moment I'm completely shot, but it was a lot of fun.

I'm still feeling like I'm over mono, but the weather and overdoing it the last few weeks is causing a flare-up of the FMS/CFS the last few days.

The big thing I'm thinking about and researching at the moment is the possibility of training a dog to do some things that would actually be helpful to me during flare-ups or in preventing flare-ups, such as fetching and carrying things and even helping with some simple household tasks like stripping bedding off the beds or picking up things and handing them to me or putting them away on the days when bending down is a challenge. There are several things a dog could pretty easily be trained to do that would be helpful and might help minimize pain and fatigue during a flare-up.

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Dogs are, of course, also great at being canine hot water bottles to apply heat and pressure for pain management--the very short-haired or hairless breeds, especially the Xolo (Mexican Hairless), are increasingly being used for this purpose for people with chronic pain.

In reading about assistance dogs, I've been amazed all over again at the kinds of tasks they can be taught to do--including things like bringing the owner a bottle of water and then taking the empty container to throw in the recycling bin, pulling a wagon/shopping cart/stroller, carrying in bags of groceries, toting schoolbooks in a doggie backpack, finding and fetching the remote control/keys/purse/shoes/whatever, and even putting laundry in the washing machine and then pulling it out of the dryer. (I don't think I'd want a dog mouthing my clean laundry, but for a person in a wheelchair I can imagine that would be incredibly helpful.)

Dogs can even help a disabled or limited-mobility person put on and take off clothing. They can, of course, help pull a wheelchair or assist with balance or stability for someone who has trouble walking or keeping their balance, or help someone get up off the floor or out of their chair if they have trouble with such tasks.

I knew that there were seizure alert dogs who sense when the handler is about to have a seizure and warn them so they can get to a safe place or position before it happens. But I didn't know that some dogs can also do the same thing for migraines, high blood sugar (for diabetics), and even sensing a "crash" and warning a handler with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome that they're about to get blasted with a sudden flare-up of pain and fatigue.

A dog can also guide someone out of a public place and to their car or another safe, quiet place where they can rest when they have a migraine or get hit with the "brain fog" and disorientation that can go along with a fibromyalgia flare-up.

Dogs are amazing.

I'm thinking that, since I have some experience training dogs, we could just get a dog as a family pet and also teach her to do some things around the house to save me some pain and energy expenditure. She might not be a full-fledged "service dog", but it would be helpful to me anyway.