Therapy Service Dog Training

We are seeking your support with raising enough funds to train our almost 1 year old Golden Retriever Bella to be a certified service dog to assist our son Finlay with daily living. Finlay was adopted at 2 days old and is diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder. An impact of his conditions is he struggles with strong emotional outbursts and self harming behaviors which a service dog can be trained to help with.

As many of you know we adopted our son Fin at 2 days old through domestic infant adoption. We did not know the full extent of what his special needs would look like at the time.

Since Fin was 9 months old he has received weekly physical, occupational, speech and feeding therapy. From ages 3.5-5.5 he was in full time Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy 35-40 hours a week in addition to all of his other therapies.

For the last two summers we (Fin & Samantha) have lived in Omaha, NE for 8 weeks in order to focus intensively on his hardest area: feeding.

One thing has remained true throughout all of his therapies; time with his dog was always a highly motivating reward for him to work for. As he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder it became clear that fetal alcohol syndrome was not the only diagnosis at play and the need for a therapy dog became even more apparent. His need for sensory input and tactile pressure was extreme. We have talked about a therapy dog for him for years but it always seemed out of reach financially.

However, after unexpectedly losing our sweet senior dog Gunnar last thanksgiving we decided whatever dog we got next needed to be able to handle Fin's rough stimming behaviors so we looked for a large dog. We rescued a large dog and we called him Chance. While he did well with Fin his trauma history was clear and it was also clear he needed a playmate so we got Bella a golden retriever pup. As she has grown it's become apparent she is the perfect choice for a potential therapy dog for Fin.

Recently, we met with Dog Training Elite and reviewed their options for training Bella to be a therapy dog for Fin. We discussed our concerns and desires for Bella to learn to lay on Fin to provide deep proprioceptive input and to intervene during his self harming episodes. We were impressed that this dog training company has a lot of experience training service dogs specifically for autism.

Normally we would use James's annual bonus to pay for a big expense like this specialized therapy dog training. However, with a job change mid year in 2023 (high insurance deductible resetting) and staying in an Airbnb in Omaha for the intensive feeding program along with paying for childcare while we were in Omaha so Samantha could work the 2023 medical bills are already over $20,000.

Therefore any help with the cost of the autism service dog training would be greatly appreciated. Also, sharing our story and the link to our fundraiser would be greatly appreciated as well.

Thank you for listening to our story,

The Bryant Family