What a mess this month has been. We started it off with A Plan: Leilani is fully in her adolescent phase, which means some days she’s a rockstar and some days you’d swear she’d never learned a command in her life. Her leash skills really took a dive, and so her obedience teacher suggested a type of “Easy Walk” harness (it attaches in the front and squeezes the chest gently if the dog tries to run off). It took me over a week to get the right size for her, and then it was impossible to get it to fit per the instructions. Yorkies must be shaped differently to other dogs or something.
On top of this, just after we saw that specialist and her GI issues finally started easing, she caught an upper respiratory illness that had her coughing until she was gagging, throughout the day and night. I was struggling with health issues of my own at the same time, resulting in both of us being miserable, exhausted, and sad for weeks. The antibiotics, or the illness, have made it difficult for her to keep food down and she’s barely eating- she has been underweight for months, due to the GI issues, so this was extra concerning for me. She got switched to a different antibiotic and given anti-nausea meds, but she’s still having trouble.
On top of that, it’s no secret that training Leilani has been overwhelming for me. Expenses aside, the energy required to regularly do public access training and obedience training with her was more than I could summon, no matter how I tried to arrange things. Additionally, the trainer helping us with her SD-specific work moved out of the area unexpectedly at the end of summer. And my health took another nose dive in September and has yet to recover (I got two more chronic illness diagnoses, so how much it can recover is also in question).
All of which led me to really evaluate whether or not we could continue like this. It’s unfair to Leilani to have such an inconsistent trainer (me), who can’t focus on multiple things at a time even when we’re just out for a walk. And every time I research SD training, because it constantly feels like I’m making things unnecessarily difficult for us both, I’m inundated with too much info, conflicting info, and the sense that it’s straightforward or intelligible for everyone except me. So all attempts to be a better trainer for Leilani resulted in me feeling worse about my abilities and hopeless about our situation.
All that to say: I’m washing Leilani from being a service dog. She’s going to be my companion and my pet, but that’s it. Hopefully, we’ll both be healthier and happier without the added stress- I know the chance to spoil her rotten is going to help me feel better about leaving her behind on future trips. And hey, she graduated intermediate obedience class, so she’s still a well-trained pup.
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