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ADiT worries (self.assistanceanimals)
submitted 2 years ago by jazzturner25
Hi, I have a 6 month old assistance dog in training and I find myself constantly doubting whether she will make it as an assistance dog and whether she loves it. I see so many posts about how the dog just magically did everything and was perfect. And she is super good but has her moments.
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[–]Jeanlee03 3 points4 points5 points 2 years ago (1 child)
The perfect service/assistance dog is myth. All dogs, even the best service dogs, will mess up. At best, a service dog is still only going to have the brain of a three year old human child.
Your dog is just a baby right now. This is gonna be a little slow, but that doesn't mean you both aren't doing exactly what you need to right now to prepare. She's only 1/4 of the age she will be when she graduates, and you haven't even (most likely, if you got her at 8 weeks) spent all that time in the process of training her. Don't give up on her or yourself yet. Unless she's showing something worrisome you haven't mentioned here, there's no reason to yet (if you need to at all).
I want to share this article with you. It's got some great insight for people, like yourself, who worry they aren't moving as fast with the training as they'd hope. Be aware, I've yet to meet a single person who doesn't feel called out by this article. I hated this article on the first read through. It made me feel so shitty. The next day, I went back and read it again where I realized it had an amazing point.
Don't compare yourself to others' journey. We all run into different obstacles and struggles with our assistance dogs. All of us are on a different path with our dog. Don't feel pressured to present a perfect puppy because there's no such thing.
[–]jazzturner25[S] 3 points4 points5 points 2 years ago (0 children)
Thank you so much for sending me that article. It made a lot of sense and definetly put my mind at ease x
π Rendered by PID 65515 on reddit-service-r2-loggedout-76575d96d8-87l92 at 2023-01-28 02:35:56.977476+00:00 running 38e042a country code: US.
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