How can she help me??

The idea for a service dog came about after my second foot fracture in under 5 years. I started to get increased weakness, grinding ankle pain and tendon weakness. The big change for me was noticing my limits changing. When I was younger, I could walk around a mall for several hours, like most American teenagers, with minimal pain. I also played soccer, softball and basketball. My other passion than dogs is music and I marched in my high school marching band for 4 years. That was when the first difficulties started, my ankles just couldn't move as smoothly as everyone else and because of it, I was constantly out of step. So after several tear-filled nights with my mother and my mother making a few angry calls to my band director, he and I thought of a novel way to create the illusion that I was in step, I marched next to a bass drummer and slightly anticipated each step. So with a ton of practice I became one of the better marchers in band, quite a an accomplishment for somebody's ankles refused to make some of the angles required for marching.

So after I broke my foot the second time, my wonderful dog pushed me down the stairs the night of the last Harry Potter midnight showing, I knew some things were only going to get worse. I then kicked around the idea of training my Hamilton, Alice, to earn her CGC (Canine Good Citizen) title. The CGC is a title offered by the AKC that demonstrates that your dog is a good member of society and is a prerequisite for most service dogs and nearly all therapy dogs. The first time Alice was tested, she failed 2 tests out of 10 so we worked on those things which were sitting on command and holding that sit. That is a struggle for any show dog because most show dog people do not teach their dogs to sit for fear that they will sit in the ring, then all hopes of that ribbon are lost. I trusted Alice to know the difference and just went with training her every day. Finally, at a show they offered CGC testing so I marched Alice up there and she passed 10 out of 10 tests so new CGC!!! YAY!!! That made everybody around proud as that made Alice the first ever Hamiltonstovare to have any AKC title and the first ever CGC title for a Hamiltonstovare. That was a proud day.

After that I started to put the pieces together to figure out what she could do for me while I was recovering from wrist surgery. I taught Alice to stand still, no matter how much pressure was put on her, so I could brace against her when getting off of the floor. Then she told me that she could do something for me. During one of our walks around the neighborhood, I noticed that after about 45 minutes she would take her muzzle and nudge my thigh or hand. I didn't think anything of it until the pain started. She was basically telling me "we need to go home because your limit is coming up..." Now I have no idea how she can sense this but I think it has something to do with the combination of change in my gait and maybe even subtle changes in my body chemistry that she can smell. The only reason I say the last one is her weird habit that she has done since I got her, she checks my breath. I know it sounds weird but she does it. So now that I know what she can do, it is adventure time (we like adventures in my house as Alice's formal name is UKC Ch. Kilcavan Alice's Adventures CGC)!!!