I never imagined I’d be self-training a service dog. If you’d asked me a year ago (heck, six months ago) I wouldn’t have even been confident I could teach a dog to sit. But here I am.

There’s a long version of the story that maybe I’ll get to someday, but the short(ish) version is this: Almost two years ago now, my therapist recommended that I look into getting a service dog to help with my anxiety attacks. So I did. I looked into a lot and found an organization that helps match people with psychiatric service dogs. After a lot of thought and research and general overanalyzing, I finally submitted an application. The application process was thorough—letters of recommendation, phone calls, interviews, video tours of my apartment—but eventually, I made it through. I was accepted to the program, but there was a catch: The average wait time to be matched with a dog was six years.

At this point, I was already more than a year into the process and, to be honest, a little heartbroken. Six years is a long time. The woman from the organization who was conducting my final interview knew it was a long time. I had barely had time to register the news about the waitlist when she suggested that I look into self-training a dog.

The option had truly never crossed my mind. I didn’t think that training a service dog was a thing that normal humans could do. But, being the unapologetic Ravenclaw that I am, I went back into research mode. I found a professional trainer near me who could help, because I knew I couldn’t go it completely alone. She gave me amazing advice about selecting a dog (a key part of the process, since many dogs just don’t have the right skills to become service animals), and just a few weeks later, I had found my Sidekick.

We’re a little over a month in at this point, and everything about this has been difficult. It’s not just hard to do the actual training (but that’s tough, too), it’s hard to even find information about, well, everything about this—how to get started, what to expect, what the legal requirements are. So, for my own sanity and to maybe help people who find themselves in this position in the future, I’m documenting this crazy process. Here we go.