Page 946 - Total War on PTSD

When we go out to do things now, I am not as fearful as I was before. One of the things we did when I retired is we went to Disney World. One of my children was still young enough to be in a stroller so who was pushing the stroller the whole time? Me of course. I didn't want to go down in the middle of Disney World and have something happen. But now, if we go back to Disney World, say in a couple years or so, if we do that then Charlotte is coming too. Walking a dog around Disney World is no small feat. She is just one thing that has greatly improved the quality of my life. When I first started getting dizzy I would question myself...I was like am I exaggerating this or something? Then it started getting worse. I can really tell how much better a quality of life I have now than I did before I had Charlotte. I obtained Charlotte from a non- profit group in Ipswich, Massachusetts called the Service Dog Project that focuses on training Great Danes for those with balance issues. They not only train the dogs but they also socialize them and take them to all sorts of venues and into all sorts of situations to ensure that they will be prepared to adjust to any situation that they experience with their Veteran owner. They named all of the dogs in her litter after authors and my dogs’ namesake was Charlotte Bronte. The Service Dog Project provides their Service Dogs to Veterans free of charge. Once they decide that you are to be matched with a particular dog, once your name has come up on the waiting list. Once my name came up, they called and asked if I could come there in a few weeks and go through some training with her to see if the partnership would work out. So, I went out there and stayed on the property in a guest cabin, and you basically stay there with the dog for five or six days as you are learning how to handle the dog in public, how to work on the leashes, how to do all of these things. Because the dogs, at this point, have already spent an entire year training. What they want to see if whether you and the dog match up. If it's a dog that you know the
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