puppies and service dogs

Puppies: I need 2 puppies to train :




I know that will really sound strange, but there is a reason. When I started down this road of cancer recovery, I was led to believe that everything would be fine after the stem cell transplant. So I made plans to do things that I thought I could do. That’s not the way the things turned out.  I found out shortly that certain parts of my body did not function as they used to, and that my energy level was not up to what it used to be.

 

I thank all the people that helped me with my Go Fund Me campaign; it helped me get through the early stages before I even had the transplant. The expenses that I run into now are still pretty high--with all the changes in Medicare, a lot is not covered. I won’t even go into how much I owe.


Back to why I need puppies, it seems now that one of the few things I can still do is training dogs. I have worked several years with training dogs and the handlers of dogs. Sometimes it’s easier to train the dog then it is to train the owner. I walk down the street every day with Charlie, my current service dog, and people ask for who trained your dog? I have to tell them I trained my dog, and I have trained other dogs to do similar functions for the needs of the person with the dog. So one of the things that I have figured out is that I might be able to train dogs for special needs. What this means is to train the dog to the specific needs of the person that will be with the dog. This has taken a lot of consideration. I spent the first three months out of the hospital figuring out what I was able to do and what I was not able to. Then I had to take a real hard look at what I could do, so I thought to myself, “What is it that I could do with the abilities that I still have left?” One day while walking Charlie, I met up with one of the neighborhood dog people. We walked together for a while and he remarked, “Why don’t you start training dogs?”



This was something that I never really considered as full-time work for me; it had always been just something I enjoy doing. At this time, I was heading back to Maine, and every now and then the thought would come to me, “Why not training dogs?” I also looked around and saw a lot of children that were disabled, whose parents could never afford a service dog trained by one of the big agencies. So I spent about a month figuring out the actual cost of getting a puppy: feeding it, vet bills, and all of the little expenses that were needed for one year. It was quite a shock. I did not realize even after spending that much on Charlie, but looking back, it didn’t seem so much at the time. Now I had to figure out how could I train a service dog and make it affordable to people with disabled children. Honestly, I would somehow try to cover just costs of care and feeding of the dogs and the cost of training them.



Any help no matter how small would be a service to the recipients of the dogs and to the purchasing of the puppies. Thank you if you help spread the word!