Young woman meditating with her Pawsitivity Service Dog My story: In late high school, I started experiencing anxiety and depression. I worked hard to change these feelings into anger, thinking that I was edgy to be so rebellious against the status quo. (Spoiler alert: anger doesn’t help these conditions.) It wasn’t until college that I realized how much compensating I had to do in my life, merely to get by. High-achiever that I was, I would do all my course reading and papers ahead of time, not because I was innately organized, but because I knew that depression could hit at any time (and if I was depressed, I couldn’t get any work done). I also overcompensated for my feelings of despair by smiling all the the time, affecting a good mood in order to be around friends that were having a good time (and then their mood would cheer me up). As the years passed, I eventually got antidepressants, learned to exercise more, and reframe my thoughts so I wouldn’t think pessimistically. My father was a United Church of Christ minister, and for twenty years I worked as a minister under his direction, performing wedding ceremonies, commitment ceremonies, baptisms, and facilitating premarital education classes. Then my father died. Continue reading

Napping on a lap. What could be better when traveling on an airplane with a service dog?

This psychiatric service dog in training is doing a down-stay with the three Ds of distraction (duration of one hour, distance of twenty feet, distraction of Kung-fu class). Yay, Lexi!

Palmer the autism service dog in training, held her Down-Stay for an hour-long Kung Fu class, so as a reward, she got petting from a little girl!

It’s another snowy day, so today we worked on training via exposure to new things, including seeing costumes, wearing costumes, balloons being inflated and deflated (and popping!), smelling perfumes, wearing a basket muzzle, and hearing the sound of banging on pots and pans.

Sometimes service dogs have to go to the office, so here we are!

This psychiatric service dog needs to learn how to go grocery shopping. She did very well! Grocery stores present lots of problems, the hardest perhaps being stopping/starting (and asking for sit) over as over, but others include keeping the dog from sniffing food, keeping dog from getting its tail run over, noisy carts, and crowded checkout lines. 

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