Service Dogs and Time Commitments

In Six Feet to Independence, I cover the time commitment in having a service dog in training. Even simple actions like going to buy milk last longer. You’re agreeing to use time in your day for things like training, playing, feeding, grooming, and cleaning up accidents. As an adult, though, you’ve already got several things that claim your time and attention. When you get a service dog in training, you don’t get more hours in a day; it stays at twenty-four. When you bring a dog into your life, you’re just making your day more full. You’re committing a couple to several hours per week to grooming, and several more to making sure they have adequate mental stimulation. On top of that, you still have things like work, personal hygiene, and sleep. If you’re getting a service dog, you likely already have challenges in at least one of these areas.

My monster causes challenges with most entry-level jobs, which means I’ve had to get creative in how I earn enough money to support this lifestyle. That includes my crochet business, dogsitting, my book, and coming soon, coaching other writers and self-publishers. (!!!) These methods don’t have a small time or monetary commitment. Less than a service dog, but not small. All this happens while raising and training a puppy smart enough to make his own fun if I don’t find new and interesting ways to work his mind. Monotony gets boring. I also get to keep up on sleeping, eating, personal hygiene, and not being a workaholic hermit that never sees other people.

All in twenty-four hours.

It all feels a bit like this:

Now that I’ve stressed you out, take a deep breath; this is doable.

An illustration that made a lot of sense recently is that not all these juggling balls are created equal. Some of them are glass and will break if dropped. Others are plastic. Everything is its own ball–brushing Cor, feeding Cor, bookkeeping for all of the aforementioned, making dinner, crocheting. Learning which balls are glass and which are plastic is the key.

Cutting Cor’s hair everyday? Plastic. Keeping him looking decent? Glass. Sometimes all I can do for him is one thing, and that gets to be okay. The difference of one day to the next in cutting his hair isn’t a lot. The difference in following through in my commitments to others, though? Glass. If people are waiting on crochet orders, or I have a craft sale coming up, I can’t let those balls drop. If I don’t write everyday, the creativity stagnates. It’s hard to get going, again, and I starve myself on my own personal fuel of written words. Doing something with these, then, is glass. It doesn’t have to be an impressive catch; just has to be caught.

Finding the cracks of time in your day is imperative. Figure out what does and doesn’t have to be done in a given day. You can’t do everything in a day, but you can’t do nothing–especially when you have a puppy coming into your life. Especially, especially when keeping this puppy alive and training it, dictates your future level of independence. 

This life is no small commitment; think long and hard about whether you’re up to it.

You were not born to fail,

Lauryn