Introducing Gem

 

Shortly after posting my last blog, I spent the next month doubled down on service dog applications. I submitted initial applications to 10 different service dog organizations throughout the country and received official follow-up applications from only two programs: ACTS (Assistant Canine Training Services) in North Conway, New Hampshire and K9s for Mobility in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I filled out each extensive application, detailing the extent of my disability, my familiarity with dog ownership and the types of tasks a potential service dog might complete for me. I solicited references from friends who could attest to my ability to care for a dog despite my physical limitations and harassed my neurologist to complete a rather lengthy questionnaire explaining the specifics of my disability. I was then asked to compile videos showing the layout of both the inside and outside of my house. To my surprise, within a week I was offered a Zoom interview with both programs. Neither ACTS nor K9s for Mobility mentioned anything specific about the timeline I could anticipate, but I looked forward to both interviews with a renewed sense of hope. At the very least, the amount of time and concentration I spent completing the applications got my mind off the almost suffocating loneliness I felt without Izzy by my side.

 

When comparing the two programs, I ultimately felt more drawn towards ACTS because of its (relative) proximity to Ithaca (an eight-hour drive as opposed to a flight requiring layovers etc.), and because of the warmth and commitment I felt when meeting Nan Ippolito, the director of client services and Mary Russell, the director of graduate services during the interview. However, two weeks later I interviewed via Zoom with K9s for Mobility in Cheyenne and, catching me completely off guard, they invited me to fly out there in October to meet potential “matches.” Wanting to be completely transparent with both programs, I emailed ACTS immediately and told them I was invited to Cheyenne to meet potential service dogs in October, but that I first wanted to inquire about what type of wait-time I might expect through their program. To my complete surprise, Nan asked me if I could possibly delay booking travel by a week because they planned to “evaluate” one of their current dogs on August 31. Contingent upon the positive outcome of that evaluation, they were planning to offer her to me. But, if she failed her evaluation I could expect a 1 to 2 year wait for another potential match. I immediately channeled my cosmic energy and prayers to all the things: Jesus, the universe and Izzy’s indestructible spirit. I do not know what role dead dogs play in facilitating future dog ownership for the people they leave behind (especially when said dog actively despised most of her fellow four-legged friends), but I desperately wanted Izzy’s help in finding her successor. So I asked all powers that be – Izzy included – to guide this unnamed dog to pass her evaluation if and only if she would be a perfect fit for me and my unconventional lifestyle.

 

I must have refreshed my Gmail inbox 327 times on the afternoon of August 31, but I did not hear a word from Nan and started to assume the worst. I reassured myself that everything would be okay, I didn’t feel “ready” for a new dog anyway. The next morning, I stumbled through my duties with Mary and tried to focus on other things. It wasn’t until my post-stander bathroom routine that I received a phone call from an unknown number and answered eagerly, hoping it would not be another reminder about my car’s extended warranty. It wasn’t. It was Nan. I felt my heart leap into my throat as soon as I heard her voice. When her opening sentence was, “Kate, I have great news…” I started crying before she even finished her sentence. She must have been confused by my silence, but my words were unable to fight their way through the heart-shaped lump in my throat. I look imploringly at Mary as if to say, say something for me, I can’t talk, but Mary was crying as well. Nan went on to explain that the dog they were offering me was a black lab named Gem, and she would be mine by Thanksgiving if I could coordinate plans to make it work.

 

After what could only be perceived as an awkward silence, I was finally able to articulate some sort of affirmative response in between halted breathing and inaudible sobs and attempted to assure Nan that these were happy tears. Happy tears that I didn’t know I was even able to produce. Before Izzy died in June, it had been nine years since I could remember producing actual tears out of my eyeballs. In fact, I communicated concern about this to my doctor a few years ago, wondering if perhaps MS had stolen my ability to emote properly, or if my years of Lexapro consumption had finally done irreparable damage to my limbic system preventing me from physically producing tears. Whatever the cause of my relatively recent emotionless existence, my last conscious memory of crying was on July 1, 2012, when I left Baltimore to move home to Ithaca. However, when Izzy died, it was as though she bequeathed me the gift of tears once again; losing her was immensely painful, but for the first time in nine years the pain had somewhere to go rather than inside my body, it streamed down my cheeks. When Nan told me about Gem that afternoon it was the first time that I realized I also was capable of tears of joy.

 

Throughout this process I have had numerous conversations with Nan where I have doubted my worthiness of an actual service dog. Dogs raised through ACTS have more skills and knowledge than many middle school students I have taught, and considering the fact that I almost always have a caregiver with me, would I be a waste of a service dog’s abilities? Do the people in my life negate my need for a service dog? The self-doubt continued to spiral: am I too disabled for a service dog? Would the skills of a service dog be squandered in my household where so many of my needs require the dexterity of fingers? Are there so many caregivers on my caregiving team that consistency would be impossible? Am I destined to bore or – worse yet – ruin an actual service dog? When I expressed these fears to Nan prior to my interview, she was so reassuring – as the layers of smothering insecurity piled on, she assured me that I was a perfect candidate for a dog of this caliber; that I deserved a service dog. So I moved forward, committed myself to what would inevitably be a long wait for a dog, and attempted to intercept my insecurities before they rendered me dog-less forever.

 

More amazingly, while ACTS requires two weeks of “team training” once clients are matched with their dog, they were willing to waive the two-week requirement for me, understanding that it would be a practical impossibility for me to tear one of my caregivers away from their own families for a 14-day stay in New Hampshire. Nan asked me if I could commit to three days of training and – before even checking with Mary or Shelly – I immediately said yes.

 

So between September 1 when I got the good news from Nan, and November 19 when I was able to reserve an accessible hotel room for two caregivers, myself and my mom, I shared the good news with everyone and started trying to imagine my life with an animal who wasn’t Izzy. When I told my college students, it’s possible they were almost as excited as I was. In fact, two of my sixth year PT students offered to take me to North Conway, New Hampshire during their fall break, October 13-16, so I was able to meet Gem even before our scheduled mini-training in November.

Fast-forward to today, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. As I write this, I have a Shih Tzu on my lap and a beautiful black lab curled up on the floor next to my wheelchair. She is, as I suspected, smarter than a handful of middle school students I have taught and inexplicably loyal to a person who has neither trained her nor pet her. She has been “mine” for barely 48 hours and she has already picked my phone up off the floor and placed it on my lap after an inconvenient spasm sent it flying upside down and under the table, she has learned to “tug” the pocket door in my room open, and these are only two things that she has “learned” in a brand-new environment with people she hasn’t even known for a week. She stays in her “place” when we are eating, does not rudely beg for human food and loves to show off her ability to “go find help” when asked. My God brother’s nine-year-old daughter (with some minor assistance from me) taught her how to “tug open” the pocket door to my room, and our next task is to conquer tugging the blanket off of me at night when I am hot. I anticipate there will be growing pains ahead of us; she will test me and I might fail. I also know there is ample room inside my brain for continued self-doubt and ruminations over ways I will potentially fail as a service dog owner. But I am absolutely certain that whatever difficulties befall us in the distant or not so distant future, I will not face them alone. The team at ACTS will never be more than a phone call away, and I am looking forward to regular Zoom meetings in order to check in on both Gem’s progress and my own.

 

Perhaps most importantly, when I let her kiss my face, even when I am not disseminating pieces of cheese from my mouth as a reward, she squints her eyes and lays her ears back against her head while her tail wags and her hind end wiggles in a manner eerily similar to Izzy. When I invite her onto my bed before I go to sleep, she curls up adjacent to my pillow and rests her chin on my chest, and when I move from room to room during my four-hour morning routine, she follows at a distance before laying down nearby as if to supervise. She loves to pick things up off the floor for me, and last night even picked my mom’s phone off the floor next to the couch and placed it on her stomach as if to say, I’m willing to help you too, you know. And unbelievably, somehow, she seems to know that I am her person – at least for now. And equally surprising, I have found an almost endless capacity to love a dog with the same fervor that was once reserved for Izzy. Gem is an amazing dog, and I can’t help but believe there was a certain amount of providence involved in the two of us finding each other. Too many things just don’t make practical sense without a pinch of divinity mixed into the equation. So thank you, to all the things I implored while Gem was passing her evaluation with flying colors: Jesus and the universe and even the spirit of my precious Izzy beast. But thank you most of all to the people involved in making me cry tears of actual gratitude and joy. Thank you to the selfless puppy raisers and trainers who spent the last two years nourishing, loving and training Gem, to everyone who works for ACTS, to everyone who supported me throughout the painstaking application process, and to everyone who helped me make the arduous drive to New Hampshire in order to make this dog a part of my life. I hope she will be with me for a long, long time to come.

If anyone is able to make a donation to this incredible organization for Giving Tuesday, here is the link. I can promise your money is going to a fantastic cause.

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=WFH4LZNL8M35G