Tag: Service Dogs

Posted on

Let There Be Light…the End

Psalms 97:11
Light shines on the righteous and joy on the upright in heart.

So I began this journey talking about PTSD, anxiety, and depression. I then moved on to my seizures and two wonderful pups that were placed in my life. How do I connect all of this together? That is easy, God!

Only one of my seizure ever came back as epileptic. For many years, I was told my seizure activity was made up. The official term was pseudo-seizures. I had several doctors who truly made me feel like I was making it all up for attention. It wasn’t really their fault. Little was known about seizures at the time.

A few years ago, some new studies came out that linked pseudo-seizures with stress levels much in the same way they link migraines. As a matter of fact, I also suffer from migraines and my doctor said very often instead of coming out as a headache, sometimes my migraines were coming out as seizures.

These stressors can come in many different packages. I have environmental ones like certain foods I am allergic to as well as seasonal allergies. My body getting run down because of being sick or lack of sleep can become a trigger. Then there is the biggest one of all, life!

Annie was very good at noticing when I was getting stressed. She would often walk up to me and get me to pet her to take my mind off things. It was very calming and I can’t tell you how many seizures she helped me avoid by just calming me down. However, when those really difficult moments came and my PTSD kicked in I would get lost in the darkness. Even Annie struggled with how to bring me back.

I don’t know if it was because of the life he endured or if God just decided to equip him with a little extra light, but Meshach knows exactly what to do. Meshach runs to my side when he feels those anxieties creeping up inside me. When I am so frightened, reliving each and every moment of torment, he doesn’t let me walk alone. He cuddles me. He licks me. He simply stays right by my side and never takes his eyes off me. Just like when we first met.

God sends him to light the path for me. He is there to let me know I am not alone and we will get through this together. In the military, it is often referred to as “he’s got my six.” The really cool thing is I have his too. There are times when he leans into me when we are in a big crowd. I reach down, place my hand on his head and he looks up at me with those big brown eyes and I remind him, we are in this together. He lets out a slow breath, stands a little taller and we go on.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds my future. Right now God has chosen to show me his love and light through four big paws and a very wet nose.

IMG_0059
Copyright © 2017 Tabetha Frick All Rights Reserved.

 

Posted on

Let There Be Light Part 3

Job 22:28
What you decide on will be done, and light will shine on your ways.

We met at a shelter.

When he escaped the man who was trying to put him back in his cage and came and sat in front of me, I knew we had a destiny. I heard several different variations of his back story.  None of them were very nice.  All of them ended with him being at the shelter nearly starved to death at only 4 months old.  He was now 7 months old, very sweet, but he was very timid and didn’t trust people.  As a matter of fact, everyone was just as shocked as I that he came up and just sat in front of me the way he did.

The nice young man came and got him, apologizing to me.  He gently pushed the puppy into his cage and shut the door.  I walked past and then back again.  It was like watching one of those paintings that seem to follow you everywhere.  He would not take his big brown eyes off of me.

My husband thought I was joking and tried walking by to see if he would look at him instead.  All the little pup did was turn his head to try and view around my husband to get another look at me. I was his world and the exact person he had been waiting for.

We got him back out and played with him for a while.  We even took him out to romp in the yard.  He took me to all his favorite spots, stopping every few steps to make sure I was following him.  He brought me various toys and responded with sits and waiting patiently as I looked over each gift.

I left him at the shelter that day because we had several other dogs to look at but I have to say I felt just like him.  With every dog we went to see, I would look around them to see the vision I still had of that cute little boy etched in my mind.

I spent the next morning going over the three dogs we had narrowed it down to.  I explained each one to my mom as we went for our daily walk.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I really wasn’t giving her much detail about the other two.  As a matter of fact, I would make a comment about them and then say something to compare them to that cute little boy.

I remember my mom looking at me when I was done and saying, “I think you made up your mind and will be heading back to the shelter when we are done here.”  Did I ever tell you my mom is a very wise woman?

I took the paperwork and called my husband on the way to the shelter to let him know I was going to pick the puppy up.  When I got there everything fell into place like God himself had already laid out every step and was shining his light on the path.

What normally takes a couple of days to get approved, took me a couple of hours.  When they brought him out he sat across the room and smiled at me and wagged his tail in delight but he would not come to me at first.  I called him by his name they had given him but he stayed put.

Once again the Holy Spirit intervened with a loving but well-placed thump to my head.  He lovingly reminded me how we always said if we ever got a boy dog we would name him Meshach. So, I looked into his big brown eyes across the waiting room and smiled and said, “Hi, Meshach!”  He broke free from his handler and ran top speed right into my arms.

So about now I am guessing you are wondering about the seizures.  Well, if you remember I had been walking with my mom that morning and we had put in six miles.  I had not eaten much for breakfast and it was now nearly one in the afternoon.  Needless to say, my sugar levels were dropping.

I was sitting on the floor in a little room with Meshach while they finalized the paperwork.  He was entertaining himself by watching the kittens through the glass.  He stopped all of a sudden and walked over to me and put his paws on my shoulders and went nose to nose with me.  I started to shake all over and he just sat on top of me and started licking my face.  Once again God had equipped a dog with the power to know when my seizures were coming and how to best handle me.

What I didn’t know was God had equipped him with so much more!

IMG_0047

Come back tomorrow to read more of our story!
Copyright © 2017 Tabetha Frick All Rights Reserved.

Posted on

Let There Be Light Part 2

Psalms 67: 1 & 2
May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.

This was not my first service dog. As a matter fact, my first answer to prayer had come eleven years before. Let me back up a little.

It was September of 2006. I had spent the last thirteen years going from doctor to doctor and trying a long list of medicines to control my seizures. Nothing was working and I had enough. I gave up all meds and decided to try a totally different avenue.

After lots of research and prayer, I chose to seek out the assistance of a service dog. My doctor at the time refused to sign off for me to get one from a company who trained seizure response dogs. As a matter of fact, he didn’t believe in them and told me he thought it was a bunch of “Hooey” and yes that was his professional opinion!

With the help of the company and lots of lessons from other sources, I learned how to train service dogs. So, we went on a search for the perfect dog. We called it operation Annie. My mother-in-law’s best friend had passed away and she was all about children and animals. I wanted to honor her memory.

My husband and I walked into a local shelter to just take a look. I remember I was on the phone with a friend walking around when my husband stopped in front of me. I heard him laughing. He had tried to walk by a cage and a cute little puppy reached out and grabbed him and wouldn’t let go.

MVC-545F

We escorted the little bundle of brown fur to a play area. She was all over my husband and would have nothing to do with me. I thought there was no way this dog was going to make a good service dog for me. However, my husband was in love and there was no telling him no.

So as he went to sign the papers and pay, I was left sitting in a little fenced in area. It was a showdown. We stared at each other. I hated the name they had given her. I sat there trying to decide what name we should give her. I swear I felt the Holy Spirit hit me upside the back of the head and say, “I don’t know what about Annie!” I felt like an idiot, but I looked at her and said, “Hi, Annie.” She leaped across the space between us and fell into my lap giving me the facial of all facials. That was just the beginning of many miracles yet to come.

Within the first week of owning this 6-week old chocolate lab/German pointer mix, she alerted to two seizures. Now let me explain something to you. You cannot train a dog to alert to a seizure. It is a rare thing for them to be able to pick up on them ahead of time. When you train a dog, you simply train them to respond once you start having one. This little thing dug her heels and would not walk another step, turned and jumped up on me before I had a seizure. I can only explain this with one word, God!

Over the next ten years, she served me well. She not only would give me a 15 to 30 minutes heads up, but she also learned how to make me start breathing again. It happened when she was quite small. She watched my mother push in on my diaphragm when I quit breathing during a seizure. The next time it happened she jumped on me trying to push in the same spot. When she realized it wasn’t working, she got frustrated and she bit me. It shocked me right out of it and I began to breathe again. Again, I can only sum this up as God!

Annie was a blessing to so many people. God truly shined his light through her everywhere she went.  She worked with kids with emotional issues as a therapy dog. She alerted to not only my seizures but also a student of mine’s, a substitute teacher’s I worked with and my son’s. She helped educate our community about service dogs and spent many hours in hospitals and nursing homes comforting people.

In 2015, Annie became very ill. When she finally bounced back she wasn’t the same dog. Her ‘get up and go’ was a little slower, her tail wagged a little less and she began to bump into things. Annie was going blind. We both knew it was time to find a replacement, but how was I ever going to replace her. The love of my life. The saver of my life many times over.

It would take lots of prayers, lots of dogs and seven months of searching. To paraphrase Bogart in Casablanca, “Of all the shelters in all the towns, in all the world, I walked into his.”

Come back tomorrow for more of my story.

IMG_0027
Copyright © 2017 Tabetha Frick All Rights Reserved.