Migraine Alert and Response Service Dog & Tips for First time Owner-Trainer Service Dog Handlers

hi everyone I'm Laura from doggy you and today I'm here with Megan and Archie her service dog and we're going to be talking of all about migraine alert and response dogs now this is a really cool team because I've been working with them for a while and I help them with their Public Access and their task training but not the scent portion of it so the scent stuff is not something that is my forte though I'm going to be taking some courses on it this year but Megan spent a lot of time learning how to train a migraine alert with her dog Archie and we're going to talk all about that today so Megan what made you want to train a migraine alert and response dog so initially I only wanted to train a response dog and it was actually recommended to me by my neurologist so I went in and at the time my migraines had gotten so severe that they were really affecting my quality of life they did a disability assessment and I came back that at the time I was severely disabled and the doctor had said that I was sort of at the end of my options for trying new medications and then it was sort of you know how can we moderate your lifestyle and how help me find some things to help so a response dog was the goal something that could bring me my medications turn lights off I lived alone at the time and I didn't expect RT to be able to alert I wasn't super confident in how well we knew that was going to work so I kind of shied away from it initially and we ended up just sort of falling into it once I got a little bit more information that's awesome yeah I mean it's great that there was another option outside of medication once you get exhausted all of those other options with your doctor right yeah truly so now your doctor and you have decided that going towards a service dog might be another way to help you with your disabilities so tell me a little bit about Archie and how you got him and all of that so I did a lot of research up front on what kind of breeds would be the right fit for me so Archie's a golden retriever he's about two years old now and I got him from a breeder that has a long history of placing service dog prospects um and I I found her through a sort of one of those clubs that certify like certain types of breeders as being you know a great health tested dogs great temperament tested dogs and things like that I also did speak to there was another service dog trainer who didn't have capacity but was able to advise me on how to find the right Prospect so I kind of took in all of that advice and this was before we knew each other and I was able to then say like six nine months in advance at least know what I needed and that was great because to be honest if I hadn't had those conversations I don't think I would have made the right choice there were a lot of reads I really liked but maybe weren't so well suited when did you start training with him honestly day one like right at eight weeks like obviously I was not training retrievals at eight weeks old but the socialization right out the gate and everything like that I mean um he was like 12 weeks old and I'm like very quietly playing like firework sounds while he's eating his food it was comical honestly but it was constant so as far as the migraine alert and response dog what does that type of service dog actually do so for me or she will alert me by moving my leg when um I'm about to get a migraine and so at that point I can now like take my medication and I have rescue treatments available and then if I'm bad enough that I'm unable to do anything else I get ocular migraine so I do lose my vision completely with them everything but my peripheral um so he can do things like turn the lights off which I'm very sensitive to fetch me medication if I need that and one of the things that I've always had a problem with is not only is it very difficult for me to see I get very dizzy which is a very disorienting feeling so even though I can feel my way around my house it feels like I'm going to fall when sometimes I'm not so artist stands between my legs when I'm standing still like if I need to get a glass of water and it just helps me understand that I'm not moving when I feel like I am yeah it's all stuttering you yeah he just centers me it's like a very nice like grounding kind of task that he does for me that's awesome yeah it's really cool so we had a patreon question from someone in the doggy you community about alert behaviors and how you chose that alert Behavior you said he poops your leg when that happens how did you decide to use that as your alert so I wanted something where he could do it in a confined space obviously I I travel a lot I travel a lot for work this is something you know really well and so I need him to be sometimes under a desk on a plane on a train and I need him to be able to do it in a confined space so it couldn't be like a big do a loop-de-loop kind of thing I didn't want it to be loud or disruptive like no barking no jumping nothing like that um so a book was kind of the perfect fit the only other thing I considered was a chin rest until like my leg or any other part of my body the reason we didn't do the gym mask was as it turns out Archie loves to drool um and it was just getting all over my clothes so the poop was the the perfect one for me and we um but based on your advice went with always doing the same leg that way I knew and the only um kind of alternative alert we have is if I'm in the car it's my right shoulder okay awesome um and how long did it take to teach the booping portion because I know we did that together I think we did a couple months it did yeah that actually took a while to get him always going to the same spot and the biggest problem I had was um pressure he he really struggled with doing it hard enough that it was distinct yeah because he kind of lightly would brush over time it could younger yeah so yeah that took months yeah and that's the thing to think about when you're talking about service dogs and picking a behavior that you're going to use for an alert is like doing what's best for the dog so chin rest wasn't gonna work because it was gonna get your clothes dirty same thing I have people who want to do like pawing a lot of the time and if you've got a dog and you're out in public and it's raining and your dog's just pulling your clothing it's not doesn't make a lot of sense because it's going to make it a little bit difficult and you're going to get mud all over yourself which nobody likes yeah so yeah the strengthening the boop can take a while for dogs that aren't naturally pushed that push into pressure yeah hey friends quick pause here so you have time to Boop that like button Jake Whip and I would be so great grateful and if you're liking this type of video I would love it if you'd consider subscribing to the channel when I get new subscribers it lets me know that I'm putting out the type of content that people are looking for and that's what I'm trying to do here so if you have videos that you'd like to see make sure you put them down in the comments below so I know the types of things you'd like me to create alright let's get back to it so how much time in advance of a migraine does he tend to alert and how is that affected your life he usually alerts about 30 minutes before which is uh 30 minutes before I feel any symptoms and sometimes as little as five minutes critically for me it's enough time to get off the road as I mentioned before I do get ocular migraines I lose my vision before I had RT I actually couldn't drive I didn't have a license and that was for like a year right that you were I was only able to drive for seven years wow I didn't know that yeah I got my license you know young and um and very quickly found that it just wasn't a safe option for me or other drivers on the road and that was just a decision I came to with my doctor at the time and when I had Archie and was now seeing that I had a warning I would discussed that with my neurologist and they felt confident that that was plenty of time for me to get off the road and it has been which is great yeah so ocular migraines what does that look like and how often are we talking that you're getting this kind of migraine like is this from a person who's getting you know like myself who gets migraines occasionally once or twice a month or what were you experiencing so for me personally I everybody who gets migraines will experience something kind of different but the visual disturbances for me are that I lose almost entirely all of my vision I am able to read I can't see my phone use my phone let alone see a road and for me my migraines had gotten so severe that I was averaging four to five days a week so I was experiencing them more days than I was not I really didn't have a lot of Independence and they could last anywhere from two hours to three days for me so at the time that I had done that disability assessment with my doctor it really came back as very severe yeah and that was your first step right is that you did a disability assessment yes to see if it was going to be a good fit yeah it's called a Midas it's specifically a migraine disability assessment and if you actively get chronic migraines and you have a neurologist it's something they can do with you so we had another patreon question that was about you know how you actually got the dog to learn how to do these alerts because originally it wasn't something that you were planning on doing and you weren't confident that you could make it happen because the science just isn't there yet as far as what the specific chemical is that they're learning to just that they can and that some will pick it up without training and then some require training for it um the whole process for that we're actually going to go do over on the doggy patreon page because it's gonna be a pretty long video if I'm including here so if that interests you um you can check it out I will put a link down in the description but it's patreon.com so we'll continue this discussion about the specific steps that Megan use um over on there but once you started training for the alert how long did it take for him to actually do live alerts for you independently probably three months before he started actually coming up to me and alerting and initially it was really quick I was honestly shocked I think getting getting the sense was far more time consuming than getting him to start alerting um but you want to tell us like a little bit about getting the sense it's it involves a lot of saliva it's very tedious um so generally speaking what you want to do is just capture a scent from before you're sick which means you know you can't predict the future so you have to do it all of the time like for an hour of every hour for weeks and it was exhausting I had lots of jars and everything has to be so sterile and separated because it's a very careful scientific process so my apartment and refrigerator were just full of jars of my scent um and it's gross when you really break it down like that and it's not a bottle right it's uncontinent that's like that was the thing where I don't do stuff work is because like I have this little weird G about like cotton balls that like I don't know I just can't do it I was afraid to have people open my fridge I was like nobody should see what's gonna do right now it was like really embarrassing not embarrassing we're doing medical things but yeah so like that but that sounds like a lot it was a lot of an easy process it was disruptive to a lot of my life too because yeah like even though I worked from home and I was able to do it I tend to have meetings back to back so I have like a short like 60 second break and I'm running off to like swap the inside of my cheeks it was a lot it was really a lot and it went on for a long time that's yeah that's that's intense yeah so we were talking a lot about the alert process but that isn't necessarily something that every dog is going to be able to do so the thing about doing like an alert or response dog is that not every dog would be able to alert but every dog will be able to learn how to do the tasks or most dogs will be able to learn how to do the tasks that are a response to your medical condition right so what types of stuff did you teach him or do you still use um that you know you use when you have a migraine so one of the big things was turning the lights off for being very light sensitive and getting to the light switch is impossible um so that's something he he did and continues to do another one that he was doing for a while is he would fetch my medications for me and bring them the only thing with that is uh since that point I've switched all my medications over to injections and I just am not comfortable even if they're in a sealed case having him carry them it's just sort of a safety concern for me the good news was because Archie's been alerting to me I can now take my medication so much earlier that I'm still capable of getting them myself at the point that I'm going to take them so that's been a huge change and then another thing he's been doing is sort of that like centering type thing when I'm dizzy yeah we talked about doing some light guide work just because I can't see and it ended up just being that frankly my apartment was so small that I know my way around and he just kind of follows me so yeah and I know originally we had also talked a little bit about um doing like some type of guiding to the bathroom because you weren't able to get to the bathroom on your own it didn't end up being something that you needed but it didn't there's lots of things that your dog can do to respond to a medical condition um you know bringing you a sleeping mask uh you know being able to guide you to certain locations if you are no longer able to see um providing balance and support when you're getting up from something if you're not able to like to transfer off the toilet that kind of thing something I've had him do too that we didn't specifically mean to train was uh if you drop something with a migraine if you get migraines you know you do not want to bend over um and he's great about picking them up for me so that's been really nice as well but it wasn't really a task I meant to train yeah it just kind of happened oh that's awesome yeah it was nice so much that you can do and like once you start training your service dog to do a thing like you're like oh it would also be helpful if they did this yeah and you got the right breed for the task that you were looking for you got a large dog he's about 90 pounds so sorry he's 80. and also a retriever so much easier to teach a retrieve to that type of dog than a dog that doesn't have a natural retrieve exactly yeah so we've talked about it a little bit but what benefits have you found now having a service dog to help manage or mitigate portions of your disability I mean being able to drive was obviously the big one for me that was the biggest life changer but I do think that like feeling of if you have a chronic illness that's unpredictable you're often living in fear of becoming sick when you're traveling or you're at work and those things were really difficult for me for a long time I was always worried it would happen at the wrong time and it often did um and now knowing that I get a warning I often have a chance to actually get myself all the way home before I'm sick which has been life-changing I've gotten stuck at work before where like I end up you know with a lot like a lot of offices have sort of a quiet room you can go to um if you're not feeling well and I would kind of go there and not be able to leave because I can't get on the train I couldn't get an Uber and then it sort of really difficult and you'd much rather just like be in the comfort of your own home when you're experiencing like very painful illness exactly it is so painful and so debilitating and just knowing that I get a warning and usually it's enough warrant to get myself home from where I am I'm often within 30 minutes of my house um that's been amazing for me and traveling I know that you work remotely but you you I remember we were like preparing for your first trip somewhere and you were able to bring Archie and it all went off without a hitch I did it went shockingly smooth for his first flight so um I work primarily remote but I do travel for work as well and I go um up to our headquarter office from time to time so sometimes I'm flying sometimes as a train um but the first flight I remember kind of prepping with you going through that whole training session and uh there were a couple things I didn't expect like uh TSA asked me to take all of his gear off um so he was completely naked no collar nothing oh my gosh I kind of remember this right I did like a kid run up to him or something yes oh my God a toddler ran up in the I swear the parent just like sent the child over it so they sent me through one scanner and they wanted him to go through a different one so I was already through he was on the other side and um in just like a Sit Stay no gear on I had no leash they were all like in first game first time going first time and like TSA is a stressful event for me like level yeah oh my god um and so thankfully he was an angel about it but a toddler ran up and grabbed his face like right on the muzzle um and I just kind of gave him like a stay wait and he didn't move didn't react and I just kind of yelled to the parent said I need you to please take your child away from my dog he's working um and thankfully they did quite quickly but um we got through TSA without a hitch he didn't move and even the whole flight he just slept so that's amazing that was amazing and that's what I always tell people is like the reason you need a bomb proof style dog is that stuff that's weird is going to happen all the time like constantly all the time you'll be like oh did that store employee just bark at my dog yeah they did um and that's the type of stuff that really does happen so like having a child read up I mean that happens quite frequently so we talked about your airport incident have you run into any other Public Access issues with Archie I sure have yeah yeah so um on occasion I've kind of gone to go into a restaurant or something and had somebody turn me away I've gotten to like you don't look disabled statement that one really gets me every time I've also just had like people who aren't really trained well who don't understand what they can and can't ask asking really invasive questions um like obviously it's fine to ask what he does it's not so fine to say what's wrong with you yeah no not okay not super thrilling um but the only two I would say like sort of serious incidents I have had is I booked an Airbnb that was not pet friendly I notified them six weeks in advance I'd be coming with the service dog and this person was just not happy that they were required to accommodate us and they uh left some really public and very disparaging things about me online that I cannot get taken down um so obviously I I posted a reply and that's all I can do and that was really unfortunate um and the only other sort of incident I had was a in Uber just kind of leave me on the side of the street yeah which is unfortunately something that most people with service dogs have experienced at one time or another exactly yeah and it seems like certain places are better or worse than others like as I've traveled he's been to 10 states with me now and I have found like some areas I run into more issues than others like I lived in New York City for the last year and I actually rarely ran into any problems in New York oh yeah that's awesome yeah usually like major cities are not terrible and then you go to like smaller places than they can be but I mean I've also been denied access to a restaurant in Denver yeah exactly yeah actually like 80 of the time though it's it's a lack of training like they don't know and if you just take a second to explain it yeah it's usually fine yeah and if you need help uh figuring out how to address Public Access issues I do have a video of that I'm gonna link it up here on one of the cars that you can click on but it'll give you a full rundown on how to best address those issues without escalating them but still advocating for your rights so if you need that click on a button somewhere being like calm and confident was something I really had to learn with him yeah and it's it's like you the more you practice it the better you get at it but I know the first time that it happened to me I was crying in my van for like half an hour because I was like just it's just not something that you're used to dealing with yeah and now you know 13 years into my career with service dogs it's like oh yeah come at me you know I've done this a few times yeah that's my first rodeo so is there anything that you came across while you were training that you maybe didn't expect or surprised you while you're training your first service dog definitely I knew going into it and you'd like no of course that is going to be difficult and it's going to be a lot of work it was so much more work than I could have expected it consumed my life it was it was everything I did outside of my job was trade messed up so full-time job that you're doing plus chronically ill plus full-time job of raising and training this dog yes yeah adding the element that like not only is this a ton of work but you are also chronically ill and you're often not feeling well it was a lot it was a lot and I think my life got much harder before it got easier and that harder period can easily last one to two years and I think that is so important to know going into it people do warn you yeah you never truly can believe it until you're feeling it and I think having an excellent support system became so critical because there's days if you are Chronicle ill where you can't care for yourself let alone your dog so you have to know that you've got that support system place so as far as a support system what does that mean for you do you mean family you mean dog walkers what does that look like it was a lot of things for me so um I continue to need a support system because I get a migraine obviously he still needs to be walked um so I sort of have my dog walker on this feed dial and um we we have a little process where I talk to Siri because I can't see when I get my migraines um and she she has access to my home at all times so she lets herself in and she takes him and that's one of those important support system things but family friends things like that like people who can walk your dog for you people who can help care for you make sure their needs are met especially if you're getting a prospect you don't just have a doggie with a puppy like yeah frequently they need stimulation in the middle of the night and it doesn't matter how you feel yeah yep and that's that's the hard thing about raising another little being especially if you're living alone too I mean that's really difficult really challenging and so yeah I think that's something that you really shouldn't underestimate is not only the support system you need but also know what that costs to have that you know what I mean like it's expensive you need a trainer you had a scent trainer as well as a service dog trainer and then you also need dog walkers potentially you know um you know day training for some people so that something the dog can get trained while you're not feeling well um you know all of those things are and lots of money on like enrichment activities so that when you're not feeling well you can be like here's a lick mat here's a marrow bone like here's stuff for you to do yeah no honestly and I had a hospital admission at one point where I remember becoming so expensive because he wasn't a service dog yet he was still in training so he couldn't come in with me I was in the hospital and um I I ended up putting them in a day program for five days which was very expensive and then needed people to watch him at night to transport him to and from the day program make sure all of his needs were met that he wasn't like broken up about you know me being missing and it was I remember it being like financially emotionally a lot yeah and it was something I hadn't really thought about going into is what if you go into the hospital before he's service dog yeah yeah and especially depending on the different laws like in Connecticut where we live the service dog in training laws are very different from the Ada laws which cover fully trained Services exactly so yeah keeping those things in mind when you're budgeting not only for a well-bred dog which is expensive all on its own and then all of the support that you need for training and also for being able to manage a dog when you're chronically ill right of course so as we kind of wind down this portion we are going to talk over on patreon about the actual steps and process that you use to get the alert that you were looking for um but while you were training him like what advice do you have for first-time service dog trainers or first time migraine alert or response dog trainers I think getting the right dog is crucial like I mentioned before I think if I was just kind of let off to make that decision without any advice I probably wouldn't have made the right choice just because there's a lot of breeds that I just like like either because of the way they look or the way they act so that they're great dog breeds for many other reasons but not for this and I think finding the right Prospect was so crucial for me so I interviewed a lot of breeders and I asked them a lot of really pointed questions like just making sure that that dog was absolutely the right choice for me thrills a two-year-old dog um but I remember like I was interviewing with one of these breeders and had this moment of ah this is the dog for me so many of these Bridges were like oh yeah my dog would just run for Miles I don't do this and I'll do that and I remember asking this one breeder like okay if I had to do this like can he do that and the Breeders just kind of went I don't know that they have the stamina for that and I went that's it that's the dog I am looking for a low energy animal because most of service dog work is lay there and do nothing just do nothing in doing nothing is so much harder sometimes especially like if you if you get migraines you know that you're out of commission for many hours yeah and I needed a dog that could just lay there and like take a nap with me and sometimes it's gonna be six hours and knowing that he's kind of lazy enough to handle it that has just enough work drive to do what I need him to do in public was crucial um and then you were mentioning something before we started about intelligent Disobedience stuff I was yes so I there was a lot of learning I had to do so I remember earlier on obviously you're you're constantly teaching your dog to listen to you regardless of what's going on around them and once he started um actually responding to my son I had to start learning that sometimes I need to listen to him and like if I have him in a down stay at a restaurant for example and he keeps getting up and I keep saying no no down um over time I realized him ignoring me was actually like an informed Disobedience he was saying no I need to tell you something and I had to learn to listen to him yeah yeah and that's something critical for people to know because the idea of intelligent Disobedience or I call it superseding cues because you're talking about like you've asked to do a thing um but there's this other thing happening in the environment that the dog is like wait wait I've been trained that this thing is the most important thing that's happening right now so making sure that you're not like you're checking making sure that the dog is alerting for something and then being like oh thank goodness yeah thank you dog yeah and think that actually I hadn't thought of this before but it stresses the value of like placing a lot of of reward on that alert like if that is the most important thing when you're training it you have to reward it so highly and that is what we did and I've had a lot of people be like oh is your job like really anxious when he alerts he like does he seem concerned no he's thrilled yeah like it's the best thing that could happen to his day is me about to get a migraine because he's like I am about to get the best reward yes good job yeah um so it's good because he's really motivated yeah and that's important to know too is you train them with positive reinforcement you're using lots of high value rewards and figuring out what I know he was like a little mediocre on food but right now like what was really valuable to him it was critical in getting the alert that you were looking for yeah I definitely had to up the ante a little bit on the value of treats to make sure he was motivated um and that that was everything well that was a lot of awesome information and I so appreciate you coming because I really wanted to be able to share your story for owner Traders out there because you are the perfect example for with someone who knew what they needed they got the help that they needed and then you really put the pieces together and put the team together that you needed to accomplish what you needed with Archie and and I it's just an awesome story and I like when I look at you guys as a team I'm just like so proud of all that you've accomplished I mean really really it's so amazing so thank you so much for coming I really appreciate it of course and thank you so much for working with us because honestly it really was life-changing for me yeah all right so like I said we're gonna head over to patreon or uh it's patreon.com you I'll put a link down at the bottom and we're going to talk a little bit more about the actual process of doing the alert and how made and what about doing that so so thank you all for watching uh if you like this video make sure you give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel and if you have questions put them down in the comments below I'll definitely be checking those if you like videos like this make sure you put that in the comments as well and you all have an awesome day and happy training

Channel: DOGGY•U

Views: 9,233

Keywords: dogs, dog training

Id: aa71FM3HZ-o

Length: 26min 42sec (1602 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 16 2023