My Service Dog

I bought Milo October 7th, 2013. He was about 12wks old. My dad had been talking about getting a hunting dog and one night I started looking. I found Milo with a family locally. My dad said he wasn't talking about getting the hunting dog just yet and said no. Because of my relationship with my dad I knew my dad would relent and I'd get my puppy. Well I was right and about a week after I found him online we went and picked him up.

The night I brought Milo home

He was so tiny!

When he was little

 For the first week I slept downstairs with Milo so that we had easy access to the backyard. The first few nights he woke me up every hour to go potty but once he realized that I would listen and let him out when needed he would sleep longer stretches until with in a week he slept through the night. Once he slept through the night we moved into my room. Like I said Milo was supposed to be a hunting dog, specifically a bird dog. I didn't get the chance to do much training with him before my health tanked. We had done some games of fetch with the wings, took him out shooting and were working on the basics like sit. By December my pain set in for good. When I had my first endo surgery in February 2014 I noticed that Milo was waking me up every 4hrs to take more pain meds. If I woke up and just rolled over he'd wake me up again and again until he heard me get into my meds. Once i realized that he was doing that I started paying more attention to how he was acting and quickly realized that he was alerting to many other things as well and had been for quite some time. At this point he was about 6 months old. He would wake me up to take meds during the night, wake me up from nightmares that I had frequently at the time. He would alert to when my blood sugar would drop, right before my pain would spike, when I was going to over do it and needed to sit/lay down. When he was around a year old I took him to girls camp with me as my health was still bad.

Him working at girls camp

Leaving for girl's camp

 As my health has continued to deteriorate he has picked up new alerts.  I'm finally learning to just listen to him as he's almost never wrong.

As of now he alerts to my blood sugar, my emotions(anxiety/upset), my heart rate and blood pressure. He warns me of my seizures and when my pain will spike. When my pain meds have worn off or when I need to take some cuz bad pain is coming. When I need to take a break and go lay down. If I am ignoring him he will go and start bugging Sam or my parents. He also has some tasks that he's trained to do and others that I hope to train him for in the near future. When we're in public he gets more leash than most service dogs because he creates a buffer zone so that no one bumps into me. He does crowd control and prevents people from getting too close. He will also help me up stairs and sometimes I  have to use him to help me stand up after sitting for a long time. Sometimes if I drop something he'll pick it up for me (something we'll be working on as it hurts me to bend over). I want to train him to retrieve my different meds. And a few other things that will help when we're in public like being able to direct him where I want him to lay down.

A few of his other tricks/tasks that he does that isn't related to my health are: We can tell him to go find a person and he will track them and either bring them to you or take you to them. This has been especially helpful when camping and my mom want the two youngest back to camp. Milo will go find them and herd them back to camp. Max has severe ADHD and gets distracted very easily, Milo will keep circling back around and make sure Max is following him. There's been a few time where we didn't know which friends Emma went to and Milo led us to her. Milo and Toby also will track and locate rabbits when they get out. When I took Emma to kindergarten on the ATV Milo would run next to us, walk Em to her classroom then come back to me and be ready to go home. Milo also picks up on other family members feelings, he always knows when one of the kids is upset.

Running alongside the ATV

A little bit more about Milo. He is a garbage disposal. He loves apples, carrots, peaches, tomatoes, cucumbers, apricots, watermelon and many more fruits and veggies. He LOVES my siblings. He will wake me up so that he can see them before they leave for school. He always acts like no body ever loves on him. He loves the water as long as he can touch the bottom and it's not coming at him, i.e. a hose. He is one of the most loving dogs I've ever met. He meets everyone on their level. We had a little girl that was scared of dogs come up to Milo to conquer her fear and at first while she was working up the courage to come over Milo tried to greet her just like he would anyone else, once he realized she was afraid of him he just laid down and waited for her to come to him. Once she did come over he just rolled on his back so that she could scratch his belly. He will lay down and offer his belly to special needs kids to. I have a very special relationship with Milo. He is my best friend.

Here are some resources to learn more about service dogs and some of the things they do as well as some of the rules/laws regarding service dogs. 9 things you didn't know about service dogs). And this gives you a better idea of my life and how my energy is spent (spoon theory).