After my last visit to the Autism Dogs farm in mid February – my anxiety had prevented me from being able to do Daisy’s public access and family training and they accommodated me wonderfully with a new co-created plan that we hoped would work better – it was about three weeks before Daisy was delivered, at the very beginning of March. One of the trainers brought her down and stayed for two days – this is called Delivery and is usually the last part of the process but isn’t for me due to the accommodations they’ve made for me around the public access and family training – while we all got settled and guided us through the basics of having an Autism Assistance Dog in your home: we already have a dog and have had a Labrador in the past but, having spent a long time at the farm and being trained by the Autism Dog trainers, it wasn’t the same as bringing a new, young dog into your home. There are habits that we’re going to have to work on, some we need to encourage and some we need to discourage. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

NIGHT BEFORE

I was incredibly nervous about Daisy arriving; I was trying my best not to spiral into a full blown panic but it was a struggle. A big part of it was just that horrible irony of being autistic and hating change and how, when you try to make a change that’s hopefully going to help you, it’s so hard to imagine that it really is going to to help because the change itself is so distressing and so difficult. It feels like, ‘how can this be helpful?!’ And even though I know that that is a big part of it but that doesn’t just turn off that feeling.

I had so many anxieties about Daisy moving in permanently: that she’d chase the cats, that she and Izzy wouldn’t be able to get on, that the change would be too overwhelming, and so on… I was so anxious that I would just be so overwhelmed that I wouldn’t be able to do what I needed to do to enable Daisy to do what she was supposed to do, to support me like she was supposed to; even if she wasn’t fully qualified yet, she was still well practiced in many of her skills. I just couldn’t help fearing that the whole thing was going to be a messy disaster that didn’t work the way it was supposed to and that Daisy would be taken away when I was already so attached to her. I had all of these worst case scenarios in my head that I wouldn’t be able to negate until Daisy was actually there; if she arrived and didn’t chase the cats, then that anxiety would be solved but I couldn’t know that until she was there and so the anxiety just felt never-ending and suffocating.

I had just thought that I would feel more confident by this point. I also thought I’d be in a lot less pain but I’m actually in more pain than when we began this process, which obviously isn’t idea when working with and looking after a dog – and Daisy is a lot stronger and more solid than Izzy (who barely weighs three kilograms). I didn’t want to let Daisy down by not doing enough but moving is so painful that I am really limited. It really felt like being stuck between a rock and a hard place: I stick to my limits and don’t get to do as much with Daisy as feels important to do or I push past my limits to do everything with Daisy and end up in even worse pain. So there’s that but the last few months have been so stressful and all of that was just filling up my brain until it was so overloaded that there wasn’t the space to process any of it or look at it from a different angle or even just breathe. I was trying so hard not to spiral into all of this anxiety because if I did, I would’ve been completely non-functional and I really couldn’t afford to be non-functional with Daisy arriving the next morning.

We’ve had multiple people share their experience with us through the Autism Dogs community and most of them have said that it’s taken time to find a rhythm and a routine that words for the whole household but nobody said it was a complete disaster, which is reassuring. But I was still a ball of anxiety all evening and I doubted that I was going to be able to get much sleep, given my history of sleep problems – especially when my anxiety is high. But I tried. I needed some rest before the two days began.

DAY ONE

It was a difficult day. As predicted, I slept badly so it was a struggle to be up and ready for 11am when Daisy and the trainer, Julia, were due to arrive. So I was anxious and exhausted, which wasn’t ideal. And I was very overstimulated when Daisy and Julia arrived: Izzy was barking her head off at another dog daring to encroach on her territory and Daisy was barking back, although a lot more quietly and gently. Her barks felt more along the lines of ‘What did I do? Why are you barking at me?’ So it was pretty chaotic to begin with but once we’d settled in the kitchen, the two of them started to settle down too, although Izzy was still very bewildered by everything that was going on.

Once everybody was nice and calm, we gave Daisy a tour of the house and Julia checked everything out, just to be sure that everything was safe for Daisy. We’re pretty pet-proofed because of Izzy and the cats but another pair of eyes couldn’t hurt, especially from someone who is very familiar with the routines of the dogs on the Autism Dogs farm. For example, there aren’t any stairs there so going up the stairs (and later down again) was a new experience for Daisy. It’s also true that Daisy is a lot bigger and stronger than all of the other animals – probably combined – so she can knock things over and so on; there are different risks; Julia wasn’t worried though and had some great tips for keeping things secure and out of reach and so on.

That was it officially for the day; the rest of the day was just about playing and bonding and just letting everyone get used to Daisy’s sudden arrival (and Daisy to her new environment). Julia had given her a good, long walk so she wasn’t going to need much more exercise; it was really all about the bonding. So Julia left and it was just me, Mum, and the animals. The cats had vanished, deeply unimpressed by the arrival of a big black dog (that was too excitable and did not have enough control over her limbs and her body in general – she quickly earned the nickname ‘Horse’ for the way she barrels around the house) and Izzy was very unsure, sticking very close to me. The chaos and the noise and the anxiety had pushed me into completely sensory and emotional overwhelm and I just cried and cried until I fell asleep on the sofa.

I was better for the sleep and me, Mum, and the two dogs had a relatively chilled afternoon. I made sure to spend time with Izzy so that she didn’t feel like she’d suddenly been abandoned but I also managed to have some good bonding time with Daisy. She seems to think that she’s the same size as Izzy and that she can fit in my lap, which she cannot, not without either sublaxing my hips or making my legs go to sleep. I don’t really get a choice in the matter though: if she wants to sit on me, she will sit on me. It is very sweet, if not the most comfortable way to cuddle. It was hard though because, when she was wandering around – exploring her new environment and sniffing everything – I just couldn’t concentrate on anything but her, just in case she got herself into trouble. I mean, we’ve had animals safely in this space for years but I couldn’t help feeling anxious that, because she’s a bigger dog, she’d find something to get into that the other animals were never able to; she’s definitely much more likely to knock something over without even realising that that’s what she’s doing. I just could not relax, constantly on watch. I’d cried three or four times, mostly from emotional or sensory overwhelm, and I was frustrated by how little I’d managed to get done, having spent so much time just watching the dogs and making sure that they weren’t getting into any shenanigans. Daisy seemed so discombobulated by her new environment and by all of the new things that were going on that she was barely listening when we – me or Mum – gave her an instruction, even as something  as simple as recall or getting off the furniture. It was very frustrating and it just increased my anxiety about how to be a good pet owner to all of the animals, how to be a good handler to Daisy, how to do all of that at the same time. All of that on top of it being a bad pain day (making it hard to do much with her given that I could barely move and that she’s relatively unaware of her own strength), it just took up every grain of energy I had.

All in all, it was a complicated, overwhelming day. I wouldn’t call it a bad day and there were definitely good moments but it was very difficult and an emotional rollercoaster and I was exhausted by the time I went to bed at 11pm – much earlier than I’m usually in bed. I got the dogs sorted, both of them curled up on my bed, and got myself sorted before joining them, not that there was much space for me. But Daisy didn’t stay long: we had a cuddle and then she hopped off and climbed into her bed, still close by. Izzy burrowed closer to me, always game for snuggling as we go to sleep.

DAY TWO

I slept like I’d pulled a week of all-nighters and struggled up, holding up the schedule for the day because I just couldn’t get ready – couldn’t move – any faster. I was already exhausted but I was determined to get through the day so that Daisy could be officially moved in.

Julia, the Autism Dogs trainer, was already there when I got downstairs, enjoying some snuggles from Izzy who she’d completely fallen in love with. Once I was ready to go, I practiced getting Daisy into her harness and her working lead and then we all headed to the park. Because of my pain, we practiced from a bench with Daisy on the long lead. I threw balls for her and we practiced recall and practiced walking on the working lead. She was really, really good and that gave me a bit more confidence after Daisy’s lack of focus the night before.

After about an hour, we headed back home, Daisy having been beautifully behaved (although she did get herself and the long lead wrapped around tree several times). I was tired but we didn’t have much left to do so I pushed through so that we could get everything done and signed off. We ran through each of Daisy’s basic commands and practiced them a few times, including her deep pressure therapy. Izzy gets quite jealous when Daisy does it, when she drapes herself over my lap, but Julia isn’t worried. She’s confident that they’ll find their own rhythm over time: day two was not the day to be worrying about whether they’d ever get along. I know that logically but it does make me anxious because I love Izzy so much but then I also so badly want it all to work with Daisy; all of that is just constantly in the back of my mind.

Confident that we were feeling good about things, Julia left us to it. She’d be back sometime in the next couple of months to do the two days of public access and family training that would make Daisy an official, fully qualified Autism Assistance Dog.

After bidding Julia goodbye, the four of us had a very relaxed afternoon and evening. Daisy and I had some good cuddles and Izzy eventually broached the space she’d been giving Daisy so that she was getting some attention too. Watching them together is already so funny; Izzy can get overwhelmed and overprotective – of me in particular, but also of her toys and her favourite spaces, etc – but while they were both sleepy and cuddly, it was very sweet. Daisy was beyond excited for dinner, as always, which only got Izzy more hyped up and then me, Mum, and both dogs spent the evening chilling with a movie. Daisy was a bit restless: she didn’t have her own bed at the farm – all of the dogs shared beds and sofas and soft spaces – so she wasn’t used to it. She kept getting in and out of it and turning around, like she couldn’t figure how to get comfortable in it (it took her a few days but she worked it out).

We were all exhausted and went to bed early again. And that was the end of day two.

So that’s that: Daisy is moved in. From there, we had a couple of months to bond and build routines and let relationships and boundaries form until Julia came back to do the public access and family training with us.