Meet Sadie, a one year old, "Dogs With Wings", assistance dog in training. She is our third dog, Pride, our first one, went to a blind man, and Aspen, our second, went to a lady in a wheelchair, who is also hearing impaired. If she makes it, Sadie will either help someone who is blind, handicapped, hearing impaired, or autistic.
Sadie will stay with us until either; her training is complete, 6 months to a year, or she fails out for some reason. Our responsibility is to get her to training school in the morning and pick her up from training in the evening. We also take her shopping with us, and treat her as any family pet, except she isn't allowed to bark, play with balls, or eat human food.
Sadie isn't perfect, as she likes to "counter surf". So far she has scored some fetticine alfredo, my son's lunch sandwich, and has chewed up my electrical cord. Hubby is not amused. We have found out that she is great at recycling, here she is helping us crunch up all those pesty boxes that take up so much room in the blue bag.
Okay, so she needs a little work!!
People always ask, how we can give up these dogs, my response? It's like your child going off to college, you know they are still around, hopefully doing something that they love, and these dogs LOVE helping their handicapped people. For a token fee of $100, these dogs give freedom to many people who would otherwise be shut-ins, depressed, and unable to function at their full capacity. These truly are "Dogs With Wings". (Shameless plug for my favorite charity!)
Update: Found this article, Elisa is one of the trainers for "Dogs With Wings". I wonder if MP Mike Lake knows about them, as he has an autistic child, and they are based out of Edmonton.
3 comments:
That's so neat! We just adopted a "failed" assistance dog a month ago! She's a sweetheart, yellow lab just like yours. She failed out because of allergies. We are rapidly undoing all the training she was given unfortunately. I thought just being consistent with correcting behaviours would be enough to maintain, but it looks like since she has tested a lot, she's lost a lot of behaviours we never knew she had until they were gone.
Ah well. She's still better than an untrained dog any day!
yea sadie's a complete nut but i do feel sorry for those boxes.
Our first dog, Pride, would never, ever, go up on the bed, he was very well trained, then his blind person got him, and within a week he was up on the bed with him.
The failed dog's are better trained than pet dogs because they get a year of intense training, but it doesn't take them long to get spoiled. Enjoy!
Alex, yes sadie likes boxes, but you have to admit you like taking her out in public she is such a chick magnet!
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