Everything with Archer was very new to us even though he was our second child. When Ammon was born he decided that he wanted to arrive quite early (born just before the 31 week mark). We discovered this time around that there are certain benefits to an abnormal birth such as Ammon’s (although we hope not to have to go through that again). The major difference about Ammon’s birth was how much more informed we felt about the whole process. Due to the fact that Archer was just business as usual (for all of these nurses and staff), we felt like we weren’t really being instructed on what we should be doing, or what the next step was. Nurses would quickly poke their heads in to check the monitors, change an IV drip, or add something new to the room, but we still felt very much in the dark about what was going on. To us this was all very foreign, exciting, scary, and a host of other emotions! To the hospital staff we were just the folks in room 6 on Friday afternoon. Now please don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe we were mistreated in anyway. I just feel that the staff may be guilty of something that I also find myself being guilty of from time to time, and that is when something becomes very routine to us, we forget how overwhelming it can be to someone else.

People come into my office everyday to explain the struggles they are having with their dog. 95% of the time the problems sound very routine to me, and often times I know some simple solutions for how to fix or manage their problems. But to these people the problems are not simple. They are FAR from it. Why else would they be paying a professional to help them with the problem? It’s the same reason we’re paying a team of medical professionals to help us deliver and provide initial care for this child. We feel that it would be far too difficult to try and take on such an overwhelming task by ourselves, and the same is true for those that are embarrassed by their dog’s behavior.

So what does all of this translate to for you our client’s? Well, I recognize a need in myself to be more empathetic. To listen more intently, explain more carefully, and teach more simply. I want to make a commitment to each of you that I will do better at not using “dog training” terms when explaining the process of what we are doing, and I’ll do my best to break down all that we’re doing, what our goals are, and what we need to do to achieve those goals. I hope that by doing this I can help each of you avoid the feelings that we’ve recently gone through of being left in the dark, and not understanding what to do next. Well, the nurse just arrived in the room, and hopefully we’ll be leaving the hospital in the next couple hours so time to wrap up. Thanks for reading! (And sorry for any typos and what not, haven’t been on much of a normal sleep schedule!)

Adam@TopDogTX