Hermes and life.

Hermes and I have been taking agility classes since the end of April. Such a short time and yet it feels like forever!

That very short paragraph was written in September 2017. Over a year and a half ago! We have continued with agility since April 2017! Two years strong. This amazing man has proved to me time and time again how much he loves me (and agility), shown me how much he wants to work with and be with me, Hermes is a priceless gift that was given to me.

Granted there are some days where I want to send him away to a new family, kill him, or just want him out of my sight. Those days are tough. Really fucking hard actually. He is a dog. He has his own ideas. He is nervous and anxious and doesn’t like it if he has to be in his box while I do something with another dog. This year we have worked really hard on him understanding that he can be in his crate during daycare and it’s okay if I’m on the other side of the building playing with someone else. It has been hard. It has been painful. We have ruined a lot of blankets. Tried different medications. Spent a shitton of money on a special treat machine. Slowly with extra training we are getting there. It’s slow, really fucking slow. To the average person it doesn’t look like anything has worked but we (our training support team) see these teeny tiny baby steps. Soon (read April 2020) Hermes will be able to stay in his crate and not rip his cover off and tear it to shreds. Soon he will realise I am not leaving him I just need to be out of sight. Soon everyone will be able to see the training he will have worked and struggled so hard with.

But back to agility. Hermes was first brought into agility to build confidence away from Lily. If you didn’t know Lily and Hermes are litter mates. We actually brought Lily home first and went back weeks later and got Hermes. Lily came home like a little angel. Hermes came home a bundle of nerves and anxiety. We soon realised Lily was the alpha dog and Hermes wouldn’t function without her.

Bring in agility. Hermes went to class ALONE. Lily was not allowed to come to class at the beginning. It was just me and Hermes.  During our first few classes, probably a good 2-3 months Hermes needed to be on a long line. He reacted to the other dogs in class while they were running. He reacted to them when he was running. I needed to have control over him 100% of the time. We worked away from the long line. Now he wears his tab but it is rarely used. We bounced from that class to this class to find a fit that was calm so he would work. For a while we were in a class that was above our skill level but the other dogs and handlers were calm and helpful. They offered advice, praised us when we accomplished something small that had taken FOREVER to do. Not just oh we did that 6 times really well but we tried 6 times and got 1 halfway decent jump/turn/whatever. Eventually due to many circumstances that class broke up and we had to move again. The class we have been in since September has been amazing. Our classmates are fantastic. We have grown individually and as a team. Hermes and I can now run an entire course! Usually depending on the course the mistakes that are made are due to my late timing or a general fuck up on my part. Have we gotten better? Yes! Absolutely! Is it still a struggle? Yes! Absolutely! Am I frustrated when I screw up? Yes! Always! But it’s usually towards myself not Hermes.

Hermes is happy in agility. He loves to play agility with me. He WANTS to make me happy. Hermes also gets frustrated and irritated when he does understand what I want him to do or can’t figure out what he’s doing wrong.  Hermes is also a dog and he doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak dog. The struggle is real. Somedays he listens. Somedays he checks out. Somedays I check out.

Seriously! This week has sucked.

Well okay. That's a lie. The last few months have sucked. 

So, now its time for some backstory....

In 2008 I was diagnosed with manic depression and severe anxiety. Along with a bunch of other crap, that for the purpose of this fall into those two broad categories. Over the years I have taken antidepressants, gone to counselling, spiraled in and out of control. Its been fun. 🙅 Especially for my family. 

Sometime I can tell when I am loosing my shit. Sometimes I can't. Sometimes even when I do notice I don't do anything about it because its either too late or I feel there are more important things to deal with than myself. It's ongoing. It's cyclical. It fucking sucks. 

Now for the more recent events....

About a year ago I purposely went off all of my prescription medication. I did this on purpose with the approval of two different doctors. Why? Because if you actually looked at what I was taking everything was a class D medication. This was bad because hope I had was to have a baby and class D meds are either harmful to the fetus and not recommended during pregnancy. Or there has not been enough long term research (the drug is new like 30 years old) to show what the long term side effects are. Class D medications are used during pregnancy if the mothers life is in danger. Like if it is safer for me to control my depression with medications that would be a reason to stay on said medication for as long as possible. So, anyway having a child was the goal. Doing it safely without meds was the goal. Not pregnant now. Never been pregnant. Bad experiment. 

But anyway still not even the point of all of this. In August I started seeing a new neurologist. She prescribed a medicine for my headaches that I used for 3 months. It sucked. It didn't work. It made my headaches worse. It made my depression worse. So she switched it. As I sat in her office she kept saying 'okay well try this" to which I kept responding 'already tried didn't work". We did this for about 15 different medications. Finally, there was one, ONE fucking drug I haven't tried, so I was like yeah whatever I'll try it. It was Depakote. 

**Depakote is a VERY AMAZINGLY dangerous drug for anyone who would like to keep living. the for most severe side effects of Depakote in order of what I think is most drastic to slightly, and god dammit I mean SLIGHTLY, less drastic are: 1) Death by suicide 2) Death by liver failure 3) Death by inflammation of your pancreas 4) Fetal harm/birth defects.**

I took this medication for 13 day. 13 days before I almost committed suicide. 13 days for me to go from barely holding on to my shit to completely loosing my shit. Now, I am not a stupid person. I know I should not have taken a drug that would bring out side bad side effects, but I am also not a doctor. I didn't think twice about taking it. If it was going to help my headaches I was all for it. Shit, I wanted it to work. Nope it did not. But I also had the presence of mind to not harm myself and go to my doctor and spend a lovely 29 hours in the hospital. Not everyone is that lucky. Not everyone actually reads the informational sheet that comes with their prescription. Actually I never do this, I just happened to do it with this one. And I walked around the house for hours with the paper in my hand complaining and bitching and yelling about the fact the drug was going to kill me. But even after my hours of ranting I still took the pills, for 13 really bad days. 

Now I am home. Now I am working on taking care of myself. Now I need to find someone to see and to prescribe me meds. Now I can not go back to work because I don't trust myself. Now instead of being approximately 64% confident in myself I am approximately -452% confident. 

Today the dog had possibly completely blood diarrhea. I sat on the floor and cried. Because, shit, what else was I going to do. 

The dog is fine. He slept all day. 

I am not. I am a very large work in progress. 

*I have not reread this so I don't know if it makes sense, if there are any typos, missing words, or grammar or spelling errors. I will not reread this. Probably ever. 

Hermes

This is Hermes.

Hermes is a White Shepherd. 

He is a year and a half old. 

And he has severe anxiety. 

Hermes while hiking.

About six months ago I started sending Hermes to private day training once a week. After a week or two his, fabulous!, trainers H and K said he should join an agility class to work on his confidence. That's what we have been doing every Friday night, since April. 

We decided to send Hermes to day training because he (and Lily) has severe separation anxiety and had destroyed 3 crates, a couple of lamps, some couch cushions, and whatever else he destroyed that I can't remember anymore. And to be perfectly honest his separation anxiety is only slightly better now, almost 6 months later. 

We actually had to stop trying to crate train Hermes last October. The day he was neutered I picked him up from the vet and was told to "stop letting him eat rocks" (seriously that's what they said) because he was already damaging his upper canines. It wasn't from eating rocks. It was from destroying crates. So, crate training went out the window. Mostly. We went out and bought heavy duty plastic crates to replace the many metal crates that were ripped apart. The new crate as some damage. You can see some spots where he has tried to chew his way out. He has also bent the metal door and if he tries hard enough he can pull the door off. 

For the most part Hermes is not left in his crate at home. On the rare occasion that no one can be home with them they are crated and have a monitor on them to make sure nothing bad happens. While at training Hermes is crated. There he is pretty well behaved, thanks to K! He still will make a lot of noise and thrash about when I drop him off or pick him up. During agility he does very well in his crate while waiting for his turn. 

Hermes and I at agility class.

After all of the training and learning we, Hermes and I, have done its nice to know we are improving. We have had a few set backs but all and all I am very happy with the progress we have made in a very short amount of time. 

Who am I?

Who am I? You might ask. I am me. I am a unique combination of anxious, confident, intelligent in the field of useless information, completely self conscience, protective, irrational, and most importantly I am comfortable being me.  

Anxiety is my friend. It has been for as long as I can remember. I don't like to meet new people. I don't like to leave the house. I don't like surprised. Those are just a few things that make anxious and nervous. There are many, many other things. Daily things. Ideas that creep up on me out of the blue. But guess what, I get up every day. I live my life. I make myself do things. Okay, maybe not every day but 5 out of 7. I may no want to do many of these things but I do because I have a family that needs me. And I need them. They help me keep going even without realising it. 

My family is spread over two houses. The house I live in contains my fiance, my mother-in-law, our three cats, two dogs, three fish, and two axolotls. The other house, where I lived until I moved here, my Mum's house, contains my mum, brother, sister, nephew, dog, and cat. Both places are my home. Both places are where I am comfortable because there are people I trust. And every single person in both houses has anxiety, maybe not the nephew he is still a toddler. 

Anxiety is a bitch. Anxiety is not fun. Anxiety and depression and people with different personalities sucks. Bad days are a living hell. If I am having a bad day it truly effects whoever is near me. I have never been good at verbally expressing my feelings. I would much rather shut myself away and be alone. Not everyone likes that. Actually some people actually hate it. But I have a hard time changing that. 

I am hoping this blog will help me deal with some of my anxiety. Mostly my anxiety about the dogs. 

Lily and Hermes are 1.5 years old. They are litter mates, have litter mate syndrome, separation anxiety with each other and with me. Since April both Lily and Hermes have done some sort of dog class. Hermes and started agility to help build his confidence away from Lily. Lily and Matt took an obedience class to work on working with each other. Both dogs have had private training at least once a week since April. Lily and I started Nose work so she can have a fun class like Hermes. Lily has also been coming to Hermes agility class as well. In the past five months both dogs and myself have worked very hard and come a long way in our training. 

We have all worked hard and yet some days it doesn't feel like we have done anything at all. In time it will get better... I hope.