Service Dog Explained

I am going to share with you about a part of myself, Dr. Marika Zoll, that most people can never notice upon meeting me face-to-face. I present as a well put together educated woman. I know I’ve been blessed with reasonably good looks,  ha ha, hoping so still at my old age in my 60s, but that all being said there’s one problem that I’ve always dealt with which is exaggerated anxiety.  This means that i have a reaction beyond normal to things that make you mildly nervous. I imagine at times the worst possible scenario which can lead to a panic attack.  I can’t breath well. It is SCARY!  Before I ever had my own PhD and all my training I went to doctors and I was prescribed medication for anxiety.  I even did things like meditate and exercise all two appease my anxiety but at times was out-of-control and it was debilitating.

Somewhere into my 40s I met someone walking on the street crouched down on the sidewalk and the dog had its head quietly in their armpit. They sat there motionless on the sidewalk like a statue. It was a beautiful site, something peaceful emitting from it and I stood there quietly as the person then rose up and the dog became active jumping in circles and they proceeded to walk down the street. Well you can imagine I had to know what that was all about so, having been accused  of not being shy, I approached the person and asked them what kind of a trick that was. And he told me: “My dog has been trained to give me tactile stimulation that interrupts my negative behaviors that most often present themselves as extreme anxiety. They can hit me out of left-field.  It’s not always or ever really completely reasonable but if my dog is here he senses it and he can put his paw on my knee or lick my hand or my eyelids gently and I immediately snap out of it sort of like getting smacked in the face if you’re out of control.” I was fascinated and I felt in that moment the calm energy emitting  from this person. I thanked him for sharing with me.  I petted his dog imagining that I myself at that moment was getting some calm energy from the dog as well but after that I made it my business to learn more.

After getting extended education in animal behavioral psychology I made it my mission to understand how this training can be done so that I could not only help myself but help others as well. It’s been very rewarding being able to share this extra benefit with people that really only think that the solution is taking a drug. I also advocate for things like meditation and extra exercise but I no longer take those drugs myself. The only thing that I Do ingest is CBD, that’s a conversation for later. Between CBD and my trained service dogs my life is much calmer or slower tempo most of the time. I really only have my bad days when I separate myself from my dogs. I hope to share more of this with anyone who asks. I have learned a lot.  I am a qualified trainer now  but find  The greatest reward comes from helping people with the relationship with their dog  as a service dog.

A special note here that an “emotional support animal” is not the same as a “service dog”. One could argue that dogs or animals are emotionally supportive for anyone. The difference in the classification is that these dogs are actually taught a task something that they can do physically for the owner,tasks depends on the service need, but that helping to STOP the PROBLEM.  My husband is a type 1 diabetic and his service dog can actually sense when his blood sugar is going high and then he starts barking. There are many wonderful examples of this. I recommend you take the time to go do some research so that you can be clear and understand and I’ll share with you now here below a very simple video that demonstrates how I might do my training for an isolated incident.