A teacher and principal, Lori Michaud has always loved her job. But young onset dementia has brought an early end to her career. At 44, Michaud is retired and living with a disability.
But she’s not done with education. Michaud’s dog, Sadie, has been trained to become her service dog, helping her live with independence, and she feels it’s important for people to understand what it means for a dog and handler to work as a team and how their response to that team can be either positive or negative.
“It’s been a good opportunity for me to almost feel like a teacher again,” says Michaud, the former principal of École Père Mercure in North Battleford. “I feel like it’s given me a job to educate the community and hopefully make it easier for someone coming along behind me.”
She adds it may also be helpful for other people with disabilities – not just physical disabilities, but cognitive or mental disabilities, even autism – to realize they can have their own dog trained as a service dog.
“You don’t have to get on waiting lists for years at a time.”
Sadie is Michaud’s service dog. She and Sadie have been together for five years, but it’s only recently that they were trained to work as a team. Sadie helps Michaud stay concentrated on what she’s doing and provides what she calls a “backup brain.”
Dementia is an overall term for a set of symptoms that are caused by disorders affecting the brain. It isn’t just about memory loss, it can also mean difficulties with thinking, problem-solving or language, severe enough to reduce a person’s ability to perform everyday activities.
Michaud says it’s hard to explain how Sadie helps her deal with the symptoms that have caused her to give up her career, her driver’s licence and her active lifestyle.
“You’d have to have dementia to understand what the dog gives me,” she says. “You can’t beat what she does for me. No human does for me what she does for me, because humans tend to be anxious about something or other, or mad about something or other, they are just never as calm as a dog.”
That’s why it’s important to Michaud that the public understands disrupting a service dog doing its work is detrimental to the job the dog is trained to do, and it is detrimental to the human half of the team as well.
Sadie wears a vest identifying her as a service dog, and the vest states, “Do Not Pet.” Unfortunately, many people ignore the sign and want to interact with the dog, distracting the dog and Michaud, who is depending on the dog to keep her focused on what she’s doing.
It’s also unfortunate that Michaud often finds herself in a position where she is expected to “prove” Sadie is a service dog. She’s been asked, sometimes rudely, if she’s blind, as if she shouldn’t be using a service dog for a disability that isn’t obvious. She’s also been asked, directly, what her disability is, which, she points out, goes against the human rights code.
She also points out it’s in the human rights code that, unless a dog is demonstrating a behaviour that is not conducive to a service dog, there’s no reason to approach the dog and its handler and no reason to ask what the handler’s disability is.
But, she does get asked.
“I get that a lot,” she says. “Every day in one establishment I was asked if she was a service dog – every day – until finally I went through enough management that they’ve left me alone.”
While she’s had some negative experiences, there are positive ones as well.
In a social situation such as running into friends when she’s out, Sadie is a great ice breaker for Michaud, who has difficulty with typical small talk.
“I don’t remember what the weather was yesterday, don’t know what I did on the weekend,” she says. “It makes it awkward in a social situation when people casually refer to things I don’t connect with. That makes me very uncomfortable.”
She laughs, “I’m like the deer in the headlights, and I’m not good at lying, and I can’t make it up.”
She says she’s getting good at saying she had a good weekend when people ask.
“But I can’t go anywhere with it.”
Now, she says, when people see Sadie they want to talk about her.
“I am more than happy to talk about Sadie, and it’s more comfortable,” she says, “so I’m a little more social than I have been in the past.”
Many people with dementia shy away from being out because it can drive anxiety, says Michaud.
“And I’m someone who works very hard at keeping things calm and on an even keel without too many surprises so that I’m not thrown off kilter.”
With Sadie, Michaud is able to live with an independence she wouldn’t otherwise have, but, at first, she didn’t realize she could even use Sadie as a service dog.
“Sadie was my dog. I’ve had her since I moved here five years ago,” she says. “She was a rescue Lab.”
At the time she believed the cognitive impairment problems she had experienced while she was living in Alberta were temporary. She moved to North Battleford, where here parents Rene and Jackie have lived for about 25 years, and intended to leave her experience in Alberta behind and get on with her life.
“I’m very outdoorsy and I wanted a dog that could go with me on these adventures I go on. Sadie was it, as soon as I saw her. I think she adopted me before I adopted her,” laughs Michaud.
“I worked hard with her and trained her to get her up to speed in behaviour, so we made a fine pair. She went everywhere with me, even travelled with me for work.”
But the dementia wasn’t temporary.
“When the dementia caught up with me and became more of a struggle, I was having trouble coping with the dog and everything else,” says Michaud. “She kind of regressed a bit in her behaviour.”
She was plagued by total body stiffness that is probably neurological, and was on a medication that made it worse, although that wasn’t apparent at first.
She actually considered giving Sadie up.
“At that point I thought, ‘I can’t manage her, I can’t give her what she needs.’”
Sadie is a dog that needs exercise. She loves to swim and explore the river valley.
Michaud thought, “I can’t give her that life. I need to
find someone who can.”
But since Sadie’s behaviour had regressed and she didn’t want her to be seen as a dog that was hard to manage, she began researching lab trainers and breeders, contacted some of them to explain her situation and asked if they could train her and find a home for her when the time came. That’s when she came to know Trailrunners Labradors and K9 Training Centre of Big River.
They agreed to help her, but she backed out at first.
“I couldn’t do it,” she says. “I couldn’t imagine being without her.”
It would also have been hard to co-ordinate getting her to Big River for training so she “sort of let it go.”
Once it was determined her medicine was making her worse and it was discontinued, she began to feel better. She thought if Sadie was just better trained, maybe they could make it work, so she called Trailrunners and they offered to pick Sadie up.
After her training, Michaud was amazed at the change in her dog.
“I think they gave me back a different dog!”
It was her turn next. She also went to Big River for training.
“I was able to work with Fran and Chris [Oudshoorn], the owners and trainers, to understand what I needed to do to be a good leader for [Sadie] and how I needed to handle her and re-establish a new relationship that was more leader-follower,” says Michaud. “It took a while to cement that into place.”
Unfortunately, shortly afterwards, Michaud had a setback.
“An absolute neurological storm … I couldn’t function even to manage a dog and I was having more difficulties cognitively, out and about doing things, that were becoming a concern.”
That was in January. It took her until March to recover, and at that time, her brother, who lives in Prince Albert and, like his sister, is an education administrator, asked, “Why aren’t you using Sadie?”
Michaud said she didn’t think she could. Sadie wasn’t from an agency, she wasn’t a guide dog.
Her brother pointed out all the training they had done, at great expense. Was she sure she couldn’t use Sadie?
“So I did my research,” she says. “I kicked into gear and came across lots of information that said, yes, you can use your own dog.”
She discovered there is really no governing agency that oversees service dogs in Canada or the United States, but there is an organization called Service Dog Canada that helps you understand what you need to do with your dog and lists the skills it is expected to have. You can register your dog through their organization and it provides an ID card, certificate and a vest.
“It’s more proof that your dog qualifies as a service dog,” says Michaud, “but no one checks on the training, which just floors me. I had a little trouble accepting that, being a teacher, a principal, someone who has always adhered to rules in my life.”
She laughs, “I’m not a rule breaker, I’m a rule follower, a rule maker, a really conscientious person that way and I had a hard time accepting that.”
She has also discovered she’s not legally required to vest Sadie because it defines her as having a disability. But, being a rule follower, she’ll have the vest and the right kind of lead.
“I’ll do everything to the letter,” she laughs.
She’s given herself and Sadie a trial period, until late summer, to see how they get on, “because it takes two.”
She may then look at further training at Big River, but, because it’s expensive, she won’t make that decision until she knows it will be a further benefit.
One of things that convinced Michaud Sadie could make a difference was her experience of waiting for the bus after shopping at the mall. She would be sitting on the bench, waiting, then the next thing she knew she had forgotten she was waiting for the bus.
“That part of why I was there was just gone for me, gone from my thought process, but yet I wasn’t distracted or fiddling with my phone, I just forgot that I had another reason to be there.”
She knew she needed something to keep her concentrated. She realized Sadie could do that, because when they go for walks, she is more aware of her surroundings.
“I talk to her a lot,” she adds. “It keeps my brain focused as to what I’m doing.”
She also talks a lot to Sadie and to her cat at home.
“It keeps me concentrated on what my moment is because that stuff just goes for me.”
Sadie is also helpful when they go on their daily walks.
“In traffic I can have some serious concerns. I don’t look before I get out on the street. I’ve been stopped in the middle of the highway wondering where the traffic comes from.”
She says she has no fear, which is likely part of the dementia.
“I don’t fear things, I don’t sense fear, I don’t sense panic, I just stand there or walk away thinking whatever.”
Neither does she see well with her peripheral vision.
“I don’t sense things coming from my side,” she explains. “I don’t see them and, if I do see them, I forget I’ve seen them.”
As a result, she doesn’t make the decision to stop.
“I’ve found with Sadie I’m alert to whether there are vehicles on the road or someone else with a cart or whatever it may be.”
On one occasion, “I was walking with her to McDonalds for coffee and didn’t see a car parked – don’t ask me how you don’t see a parked car but I didn’t see it – and she stepped out in front of me.”
She says Sadie’s not trained to do that but she has the instincts Michaud doesn’t have anymore.
“So instead of smashing into the car, she knows to stop. She stops and I stop,” Michaud explains.
Sadie also stops at all the intersections.
“She’s very smart. As soon as I do a routine with her she’s got it like that,” says Michaud, snapping her fingers. “She’s incredibly intelligent, so I force myself to practice with her walking on the sidewalk and stopping on every curb. So if I don’t [stop], she’s hesitant, she’ll stop or pull on the lease or slow down and that snaps me out of it … so she really is a bit of a backup brain for me. She can think about things that I wouldn’t think of.”
Michaud gave up driving voluntarily in November.
“I had already backed into the neighbour’s car, crushed it like a can, backed into rocks. wrecked the mirror on my truck too close to another vehicle.”
When she saw some of her recent test results, she knew they weren’t just accidents.
“I gave up my license willingly, so since then I’ve been walking everywhere or taking the bus so [Sadie’s] a huge comfort that someone else is doing part of my job.”
Michaud’s journey with dementia started after a 2008 surgery to repair the knee she’d injured playing floor hockey. She was living and teaching in Okotoks, Alta., at the time. There was nothing unusual about the surgery, but after she went back to work she started noticing changes.
“I was not the same person,” she says. “I was dropping the ball on things that didn’t make any sense, couldn’t keep track of conversations, couldn’t keep track of instructions that might have been given by a secretary walking down the hallway. It wasn’t me.”
At home, she’s leave her garage door open, even her front door.
“I would redo groceries I had no idea I had already done, lose my way places and it was just absurd.”
Her doctor sent me to a neurologist who concluded it was likely dementia and likely triggered by the anesthetic. She was told to take leave from work, take some time to follow through some testing and start working with the neuropsychologist.
“That was tough. I was 40 at the time.”
Until that time, she had felt she had it all.
“I was where I wanted to be, I loved Okotoks, I loved the staff that I worked with, the admin I worked with, I was where I finally thought, ‘I love living here, I love working here.’”
As time went by, working with a neuropsychologist and a naturopath, she began to feel better and managed to convince her family doctor it was a temporary setback. She’d also convinced herself, too, partly through taking apprentice carpentry course in Calgary to have some fun and to prove her brain was working.
“I struggled with it, but I did well.”
When she went to see about going back to work, she could sense the apprehension.
“So I made the decision to come back to Saskatchewan to start fresh. I thought I would sub for a year or so, then decide where I wanted to be, here in north Battleford, or in P.A where my brother is, or Saskatoon where my friends were.
She left it wide open, telling herself, “I’m never going to be sick again. I am going to do all the things right, manage stress, whatever I need to do.”
She got a job subbing at École Père Mercure, then teaching English, then that turned into helping with principalship, which turned into full time.
“I really debated, because I thought maybe it’s too much and I don’t want to be sick again. I hemmed and hawed and thought what a waste of talent, what a waste that I wasn’t living up to what I thought was my potential and what other employers thought was my potential, which was to be an administrator. So I dove in, and I did it.”
She loved her new job as an administrator. She felt she was doing well – in the beginning – but towards the end she was struggling.
It could have been written off to stress, new demands, not eating well, not sleeping well, she said, even by the doctors.
But by the end of the third school year she knew something was really wrong.
“I thought, ‘I need to go back to the doctor and I need to follow through.’
Before she had left Alberta, she had been called to the dementia clinic in Calgary, but she told herself, “No, I don’t need it. I just shut the door on that and really had nothing to do with doctors for three years.”
She knew working toward a diagnosis was going to be a long process but she committed to taking the time to go though all the testing.
“And I wasn’t going to back out.”
There are, of course, always wait lists, and every possible reason that you might have cognitive problems has to be evaluated first before they consider dementia. She began to lose patience with the process, because she didn’t know if she should continue working.
“I didn’t feel like I was going to be a good leader for the school,” she says. “It was showing when I started school in 2013.”
Her doctor finally agreed she should go for private testing in Alberta. She paid for a full cognitive assessment, three days of brain testing.
“It was significant in the testing and so that got the ball rolling here,” says Michaud. “That gave what I felt was the concrete evidence doctors needed to believe me.”
Michaud had never felt it was right to blame her cognitive difficulties on her job. She loved her work and always had. But it had even been suggested she change her job.
“I was almost convinced I needed to do that,” she says. “I would have lost all my benefits. A lot of good things came from my job and I would have just trashed all that.”
It’s now clear the job was not behind her symptoms.
“I’d never struggled in my life cognitively, never. I always had higher than average grades, ran my own IT business for years, worked way harder than I worked as a principal. Something happened in the surgery, whatever it was.”
She says, “I was never looking to blame, to sue, nothing like that. I just needed people to believe it changed me.”
Doctors pretty much agree, she says, but there will never be proof.
“I think it was just bad luck,” she says.
“I consider myself very lucky that I was able to come back here to work the three years that I worked and achieve some of the things I always wanted to achieve in my career … I’m glad I ignored it at the time and pushed forward to get to the point where I really couldn’t do anything anymore.”
She admits the stress of the administration job likely led to a decline quicker than part time teaching would have done.
“I agree with that, but I still don’t have any regrets. I wanted to try it, I wanted to do it.”
Michaud, who has always enjoyed new challenges and starting fresh in new locations, has considered moving, but now she plans to stay where she is.
She considered moving to Big River, an area she had fallen in love with. It was a smaller community where life was simpler and she had thought to volunteer with Trailrunners.
She also considered going to Saskatoon.
“There are two fields of thought when it comes to me. There’s the group of people that think I belong in the city close to my doctors and specialists and there’s the group of people who recognize I’m very much an outdoorsy person and that quiet is what I prefer and what I need.”
She explored that option to the point where she almost moved there too.
“I actually had my house listed, and things fell through,” she says. “Things happen for a reason and I recognized the stress it was bringing on me and we figure that was the setback in January.”
She decided, “I don’t want to push my luck. I don’t want to progress any quicker than I need to and I know a move would set me back in a lot of ways. The time for looking for new challenges is past.”
She intends to keep making things work here.
“I am very good at adapting … I actually owe that to teaching because I learned to do that for kids and now I do it for myself.”
She says, “I’m very solution-oriented, very focused on how to make it work based on where I’m at where right now, to not give up, not do what the typical reaction might be … I just want to keep doing what’s been working for me and not take any chances because I can’t undo it.
She lives her days by routine.
“I don’t deal with well with things that are not routine,” says Michaud. “I’m very lucky that Sadie is that way, too … She loves routine and I love routine, I pretty much get up at the same time, my structure is the morning is the same every day. We might change the route that we walk, but it’s within a standard set of routes. It’s comforting in that sense and allows me to manage my fatigue.”
But there is time off for Sadie.
“She has ‘dog days’ off,” laughs Michaud. “Sunday is her dog day, holidays are dog days.
And when Michaud doesn’t have any appointments, Sadie often gets a day at the river.
“She loves swimming, she loves walking the trails and, for me, that’s my sense of peace, too. When I get too agitated, I take her down on the trails and we see the moose, and we see the owls, and we see wildlife and peace, and that’s just for both of us, ‘Whew!’”
Continued from Page 6
She says Sadie’s not trained to do that but she has the instincts Michaud doesn’t have anymore.
“So instead of smashing into the car, she knows to stop. She stops and I stop,” Michaud explains.
Sadie also stops at all the intersections.
“She’s very smart. As soon as I do a routine with her she’s got it like that,” says Michaud, snapping her fingers. “She’s incredibly intelligent, so I force myself to practice with her walking on the sidewalk and stopping on every curb. So if I don’t [stop], she’s hesitant, she’ll stop or pull on the lease or slow down and that snaps me out of it … so she really is a bit of a backup brain for me. She can think about things that I wouldn’t think of.”
Michaud gave up driving voluntarily in November.
“I had already backed into the neighbour’s car, backed into rocks, wrecked the mirror on my truck.”
When she saw some of her recent test results, she knew those weren’t just accidents.
“I gave up my license willingly, so since then I’ve been walking everywhere or taking the bus so [Sadie’s] a huge comfort that someone else is doing part of my job.”
Michaud’s journey with dementia started after a 2008 surgery to repair the knee she’d injured playing floor hockey. She was living and teaching in Okotoks, Alta., at the time. There was nothing unusual about the surgery, but after she went back to work she started noticing changes.
“I was not the same person,” she says. “I was dropping the ball on things that didn’t make any sense, couldn’t keep track of conversations, couldn’t keep track of instructions ... It wasn’t me.”
At home, she’d leave her garage door or her front door open.
“I would redo groceries I had no idea I had already done, lose my way places. It was just absurd.”
Her doctor sent her to a neurologist who concluded it was likely dementia triggered by the anesthetic. She was told to take leave from work, follow through some testing and start working with a neuropsychologist.
“That was tough. I was 40 at the time.”
Until then, she had felt she had it all.
“I was where I wanted to be, I loved Okotoks, I loved the staff that I worked with, the admin I worked with, I was where I finally thought, ‘I love living here, I love working here.’”
As time went by, working with a neuropsychologist and a naturopath, she began to feel better and managed to convince her family doctor it was a temporary setback. She’d also convinced herself, too, partly through taking an apprentice carpentry course in Calgary to have some fun and to prove her brain was working.
“I struggled with it, but I did well.”
When she went to see about going back to work, she could sense the apprehension.
“So I made the decision to come back to Saskatchewan to start fresh. I thought I would sub for a year or so, then decide where I wanted to be, here in North Battleford, or in P.A where my brother is, or Saskatoon where my friends were.”
She left it wide open, telling herself, “I’m never going to be sick again. I am going to do all the things right, manage stress, whatever I need to do.”
She got a job subbing at École Père Mercure, then teaching English. That turned into helping with principalship, which turned into full time.
“I really debated, because I thought maybe it’s too much and I don’t want to be sick again. I hemmed and hawed and thought what a waste of talent, what a waste that I wasn’t living up to what I thought was my potential and what other employers thought was my potential, which was to be an administrator. So I dove in, and I did it.”
She loved it, and she felt she was doing well – in the beginning – but towards the end she was struggling. It could have been written off to stress, new demands, not eating well, not sleeping well, she said. But by the end of the third school year she thought, “I need to go back to the doctor and I need to follow through.”
Before she had left Alberta, she had been called to the dementia clinic in Calgary, but she told herself she didn’t need to go.
“I just shut the door on that and really had nothing to do with doctors for three years.”
This time, she knew it would be a long process but she committed to taking the time to go through all the testing.
“And I wasn’t going to back out.”
There are, of course, always wait lists, and every possible reason that you might have cognitive problems has to be evaluated first before they consider dementia. She began to lose patience with the process, because she didn’t know if she should continue working.
Her doctor finally agreed she should go for private testing in Alberta. She paid for a full cognitive assessment, three days of brain testing.
“It was significant in the testing and so that got the ball rolling here,” says Michaud. “That gave what I felt was the concrete evidence doctors needed to believe me.”
Michaud had never felt it was right to blame her cognitive difficulties on her job. She loved her work and always had. But it had even been suggested she change her job.
“I was almost convinced I needed to do that,” she says. “I would have lost all my benefits. A lot of good things came from my job and I would have just trashed all that.”
It’s now clear the job was not behind her symptoms.
“I’d never struggled in my life cognitively, never. I always had higher than average grades, ran my own IT business for years, worked way harder than I worked as a principal. Something happened in the surgery, whatever it was.”
She says, “I was never looking to blame, to sue, nothing like that. I just needed people to believe it changed me.”
But there will never be proof.
“I think it was just bad luck,” she says.
“I consider myself very lucky that I was able to come back here to work the three years that I worked and achieve some of the things I always wanted to achieve in my career … I’m glad I ignored it at the time and pushed forward.”
She admits the stress of the administration job likely led to a decline quicker than part-time teaching would have done.
“I agree with that, but I still don’t have any regrets. I wanted to try it, I wanted to do it.”
Michaud, who has always enjoyed new challenges and starting fresh in new locations, has considered moving, but now she plans to stay where she is.
She considered moving to Big River, an area she had fallen in love with. It was a smaller community where life was simpler and she could volunteer with Trailrunners.
She also considered going to Saskatoon.
“There are two fields of thought when it comes to me. There’s the group of people that think I belong in the city close to my doctors and specialists and there’s the group of people who recognize I’m very much an outdoorsy person and that quiet is what I prefer and what I need.”
She explored that option to the point where she almost moved there, too.
“I actually had my house listed, and things fell through,” she says. “Things happen for a reason and I recognized the stress it was bringing on me and we figure that was the setback in January.”
She decided, “I don’t want to push my luck. I don’t want to progress any quicker than I need to and I know a move would set me back in a lot of ways. The time for looking for new challenges is past.”
She intends to keep making things work here.
“I am very good at adapting … I actually owe that to teaching because I learned to do that for kids and now I do it for myself.”
She says, “I’m very solution-oriented, very focused on how to make it work based on where I’m at where right now, to not give up, not do what the typical reaction might be … I just want to keep doing what’s been working for me and not take any chances because I can’t undo it.”
She lives her days by routine and Sadie fits right in in that respect.
“She loves routine and I love routine. I pretty much get up at the same time, my structure in the morning is the same every day. We might change the route that we walk, but it’s within a standard set of routes. It’s comforting in that sense and allows me to manage my fatigue.”
But there is time off for Sadie.
“She has ‘dog days’ off,” laughs Michaud. “Sunday is her dog day, holidays are dog days.”
And when Michaud doesn’t have any appointments, Sadie often gets a day at the river.
“She loves swimming, she loves walking the trails and, for me, that’s my sense of peace, too. When I get too agitated, I take her down on the trails and we see the moose, and we see the owls, and we see wildlife and peace, and for both of us, it’s, ‘Whew!’”
