What Next?

After doing the math, I spent $1,425.10 just on Levi and his food/gear/vet needs. He was rehomed for $500, so I took a personal loss of $925.10 in this situation, not including the costs of paying my private trainer for her work.

Now that Levi has washed out, I have to start over. Fortunately, I have a fantastic answer to the question of, “What next?”

To begin with, I began pursuing service dog programs again. I’d previously been rejected by 35 programs, and recent inquiries raised that number to 43 programs which didn’t work out. Of the new ones, either they didn’t take people with my disability, or they only accepted local applicants. After I investigated multiple organizations, two accepted me and a third seemed like they might accept me once I had my doctor fill out a portion of the application form and applied.

One of the programs which accepted me charges $12,500 to match me to a fully-trained SD, and the other price was $10,000 but I’d be working with a Labrador, a breed I’d rather not have. That’s about the amount of money I would be putting into a dog from my private trainer, except there would be no personal financial loss if another dog washed out from training like Levi did. They’d simply pull up the next available dog, and I’d be matched to a fully trained service dog in the end, period. Even with the steep price tags, a SD from an organization would likely be far cheaper overall.

Working with a SD program was my first choice, and I worked to move forward in that process until a far better option came along.

A friend through Facebook contacted me, offering to give me the GIFT of a service dog! After training her own dog to work for her, she felt pulled to offer the same thing to someone else. She picked me.

I’d be responsible for a far more minimal portion of the costs. Any SD-specific gear like the vest to wear in public, boots to protect paws, and a raincoat to avoid the wet dog smell everyone loves. Of course, the cost of traveling out of state for team training would fall to me, too. She would raise, feed, train, and care for this dog for the 18-24 months until he or she was ready to graduate, and during that time I contribute what I can toward major costs like food, vaccinations, and hip x-rays.

There was no question about it that I would say yes, and I did, with much enthusiasm!

Our next step is to find a good breeder who produces golden retriever puppies with calm, stable temperaments, health-tested parents (those hips are important!) AND is willing to donate a puppy to us.

Currently we are working through a list of reputable breeders.

A Long Overdue Levi Update

Levi had his preliminary hip x-rays on January 27th at 14 months old.

It was a regular vet, not an orthopedic vet.  The news wasn’t great. His left hip socket is shallow.  My trainer was not told how shallow, since apparently only ortho vets give the ratings.  Sadly, I was told that Levi would never be able to do mobility work.  (I’d planned for him to do momentum pulling.)  Thankfully he was not placed on any exercise restrictions or any training restrictions after the x-rays.  It was only working that was a risk.

He could have probably been a working dog, but would have had to retire early.  How early was “early”?  We had no way to know.  A second opinion from an actual ortho vet could have given us a better timeline, but I didn’t have the money for that and even if I did, it probably wouldn’t have told us anything different.

While Levi might have been able to work the normal amount of working years (for his breed mixes) with little to no problems, he also may have problems down the road and have to be pulled from working far sooner than “normal”.  My trainer told me that Levi’s hip made him prone to injury, and if he happens to twist wrong in a year, that could be it.  He could be pulled from all work in as little as a year.

I had to make a decision.

Do I continue pouring money into a dog who would more than likely have to retire early?  Or do I rehome him to a pet home, and start over with another prospect?  It was evening when I found out his x-ray results, and by the next morning I’d made the choice to wash him out of training.

I liked Levi.  I liked him for his size (height and weight), his very calm temperament, for the fact that he reacts WONDERFULLY to people with my condition.  I liked the fact that we found a dog who had already been in training as a SDiT, and thus has a fantastic foundation laid.  Any future prospect we find would probably not have that foundation, since my trainer will now be looking for a young adult dog around a year old.

I decided that I’d rather begin again with a dog whose parentage is known, and whose hips are cleared, instead of playing the “hoping” game with Levi’s hips.

Just a few days after washing Levi out, I drove through the area on a cross-country move from California to Minnesota.  I met and photographed the dog who had been planned for me less than 48 hours after making a very hard decision to pull him from all service dog training.  He was everything I hoped he’d be, minus being a dog with fantastic hips.

In early February my trainer interviewed several prospective owners and families who were interested in adopting Levi as a pet.  He went to a couple about my age (late twenties) who like to go camping.  One of them works from home, so Levi won’t be alone/bored all day!  They went to meet him on February 4^th, and picked him up February 7th. 

This couple will be taking Tucker, as they renamed him, to training sessions with the same dog trainer just to stimulate him and make him into the best dog he can be!  Wanting to continue his training is a good sign, and it makes me happy about his new life as a beloved pet.

Food for My Furry Miniature Elephant

The good news is that I found a cheaper source for Levi’s Taste of the Wild kibble. 

Instead of my trainer paying $51 in her area for a bag of this dog food, I can get it on Amazon for $44.89, and free shipping sends it directly to her house!  At a rate of 5 cups of kibble a day, this would reduce the monthly cost of Levi’s food from $65.88 down to only $57.98.

The bad news is that despite a cheaper kibble source, the monthly food cost is still increasing by $3.70 overall due to my growing puppy. 

Levi’s food needs have grown along with him.  He has gotten taller without any weight gain, so we have decided to increase his food to 6 cups of kibble each day.  This means he will get 20 days of eating from each bag of food and will eat through 1.55 bags of food per month.  If each bag continues to cost $44.89 through Amazon, then monthly food costs will be $69.58. 

My hope is that when Levi finishes growing, he will be back to eating 5 cups a day as an adult. 

 

Hungry, Hungry Hippo

Levi got to visit the vet today, visiting as a bystander.  (It helps for a service dog to have positive associations with the vet before going in for any treatment or procedure.)  While there, my trainer put the vet’s scale to use. 

His official weight at 12 months and 3 weeks old is 82 pounds!  It’s very close to my trainer’s guess of 80 pounds. Right now his height is 29.5 inches at the shoulders, but the vet says he may grow another inch or even two inches taller!  As for an estimate of his adult weight, the vet told my trainer that Levi may wind up to be a whole 95 pounds.  This was a surprise, since we’d guessed an adult size of 85 pounds, give or take. 

Currently my pup eats 5 cups of Taste of the Wild brand kibble each day.  If he does hit 95 pounds, this may increase to around 6 cups per day. 

Online sources say that ToTW has 120 cups of kibble in their 30-pound bags.  Dividing that by the five cups that Levi eats, each bag should last around 24 days.  Assuming 31 days in every month (I rounded up), he’ll need 155 cups of food in a month.  That’s 1.2916 bags of food per month just to keep him fed.  At $51 per bag where my trainer lives, this means a cost of $65.88 per month for Levi’s food. 

If Levi’s food needs do increase to 6 cups of kibble per day, then the monthly cost will be around $79.05 instead. 

 

How I’m Fundraising

I am struggling to raise funds for the costs associated with Levi.  I find it hard to outright ask for donations, so I went about things a slightly different way.

In June 2013, I opened a shop on Etsy to sell my handmade beaded jewelry.  Unfortunately, it did not take off like I’d hoped, and in thirty months’ time I’ve had just seventeen people make a purchase from me.  They say that on Etsy, the jewelry market is the most saturated category.

With little interest in my beadwork, I thought perhaps there might be some interest in my nature photography.  This past July, I opened a second shop on Etsy just for the photography, and spent over three months editing my photos so they were ready to put up.  So far I have made two sales.

In all honesty, this gets discouraging, but I’m still trying.  I promote my art regularly, and still have hope that some might be purchased as a Christmas gift.

Ocean of Beads, my beadwork on Etsy.

Sunny Oak Studio, my photography on Etsy.

Expected Costs for the Housing and Care of Levi

My trainer and I have discussed the numbers in depth, and these are the expected costs to purchase Levi and the items needed to house and train him.  Of course, it does not include the cost of hiring my trainer to do all of this!

• Dog: $1,000
• Gasoline to assess and then get dog: $30
• Vet care (one year): $400 (estimated)
• Emergency vet fund (refunded to use toward team training): $1,800
• Food (one year): $800
• Training treats (one year): $375-$600
• Gear: $150
• Various training tools: $40
• Boots: $35
• Dog bed: $0 (came with the dog)
• Bowls: $0 (came with the dog)
• Wire crate with divider: $0 (came with the dog)
• Crate mat: $0 (came with the dog)
• Chews for one year: $250
• Gasoline for proofing training (one year): $2,080
• Monthly flea and heart worm meds (one year): $100
• Shampoo (one year): $75
• Preliminary hip and elbow x-rays: $250
• Hip and elbow certification: $350
• Neuter: $0 (he came neutered)
• TOTAL: $7,735 to $7,960

Gear costs include things like a service dog vest (obviously a yellow one), collars, leashes, a car harness, a Dremel tool for his nails, etc.  Having a harness to attach to the car’s seat belt will keep Levi from becoming a projectile if I’m in a car accident, the same way that a my own seat belt works!  The prices for flea and heart worm meds are what my trainer pays, local to her.  We hope that the emergency vet fund will go unused, but if anything should happen, costs for an emergency vet trip can’t come out of my trainer’s own pocket.  At the time I’m matched to a SD, the emergency vet fund will be refunded to me, and I plan to use it for transportation and lodging during the two-week team training when I learn to work with my dog.

These costs I’ve listed for Levi and his equipment are actually very low.  We got lucky finding a dog with the right temperament for SD work, not to mention one who comes with the foundation laid for this job!  Typically a purebred puppy costs $1,500 to $2,000 for the dog alone.  Levi was just $1,000 and came with his crate, his crate mat, his dog bed, his toys, his bowls, and his collar.  And he was already neutered, which cuts costs even more.  Because my trainer won’t be working with him for two full years, that further reduces the budget for food, chew toys, and gasoline needed to socialize him.

Of course, all of these equipment costs that I’ve summarized are only correct assuming that Levi succeeds in being trained as a service dog.  My trainer thinks he’ll make it, and be ready to work in about one year.  But if he fails out of training, we will have to start over from the beginning, and next time it won’t be so “cheap”.

Not Exactly Sixty-Five Pounds…

Contrary to what I’d thought, Levi is not gonna be in the range of 60-65 pounds as an adult. Apparently his “recent” weight was an incorrect number.

My trainer compared him to a dog she knows that is 75 pounds, and my boy’s actually bigger! Levi is estimated to be about 80 pounds now, and possibly fill out to be 85 as an adult!

He is 29.9″ tall at the withers.  And to think, I only needed a dog who was 50 pounds (at minimum) for the momentum pulling task!

Meet Levi!

These past few months, my dog trainer has been searching for a prospective SD candidate to begin training for me. My vote was for a standard poodle or a golden retriever, two rather intelligent breeds known for success as service dogs.

On September 12, 2015 my trainer asked me whether I would consider a poodle mix, saying that she may have an “already started” older puppy available to her.

She began to list things she knew about this dog, including that basic obedience is already done. In fact, he’d been in training to be a service dog, and was trained by someone very good! Happily for me, but unfortunately for the disabled person, they would up to be allergic to the dog.

Half Labrador, a quarter golden retriever, and a quarter standard poodle does not generally create a hypoallergenic dog, contrary to popular belief. Many people think that poodle mixes, just like standard poodles, are hypoallergenic. This is a common belief, but it’s false. Just like any mutt, a poodle mix may have traits of either parent, including the aspects that people are allergic to. In the case of this dog, he produces allergens that someone with a dog allergy couldn’t handle.

At eleven months old, he is past the fear stages of a puppy. “Barring something extremely traumatic happening, the dog is out of the failure stage,” my trainer told me. It’s that first year of life when a dog would generally react poorly to a situation or stimulus, if there was going to be a reaction at all. But this dog has already had all of his socialization to different people, animals, sounds, environments, textures to walk on, etc, and passed! The foundations have been laid for a very high chance of success here, even better odds than if we were starting with an eight-week-old puppy. With a young puppy, training would begin and continue for a year while I waited and desperately hoped that nothing happened to “wash out” or fail the dog from his or her training. With this dog, thankfully, we’re past that point. This boy is well on the path to becoming a service dog.

Was I interested in this dog? My response, of course, was that the only reason I wouldn’t want him would be if his coat was rough or wiry!

More information came on September 15th.

He’d come from Craigslist, picked out by the person for whom he’d been intended, and brought home at eight weeks old. Training started at the age of nine weeks. Usually dogs advertised on Craigslist don’t come from the best breeders, and their heritage is murky at best. His, though, isn’t a complete guess: we know what his parents were, just not their colors. With one canine parent being a full Labrador retriever, and the other parent being half poodle/half golden retriever, he’s what’s called a “doodle”. (Doodles are mutts, poodle mixes advertized as a “designer” “breed” and sold for exorbitant prices to people who don’t know any better. Often they are poorly behaved and unhealthy.) He looks like a scruffy yellow Lab, so I’m guessing that his Lab parent was a yellow Lab, and his poodle/golden mix parent came from a white poodle grandparent. But that will remain a mystery.

The sire of this dog –whether that’s the purebred Lab or the poodle/golden mix is anyone’s guess– had his hips tested and they were found to be sound. That’s encouraging for his own hips being fit for life as a working dog. Already he’s around fifty-five pounds, and estimated to mature in the range of sixty to sixty-five pounds as an adult. The exact size of dog I’d hoped to be matched to, if I could pick their size.

Beyond all of the basic obedience and socialization, he has been trained to retrieve dropped items, which is a task on my list, one I’ll need in case my back goes bad again. Currently he is working on “under”, tucking himself under a table or similar object to be unobtrusive, as well as learning to ignore distracting people and dropped food.

According to the original trainer, he’s a very soft and attentive dog. In this situation, “soft” does not refer to his coat. In the dog training world, a soft dog is one who doesn’t need much correction. They might even be called sensitive, in some ways. We were also told that he would make a great service dog for my specific needs and disability.

October 4^th was the day that my trainer went to meet this candidate for the first time to formally assess him.

This included putting him through his paces, and seeing what needs work. How well can he figure out body language? Does he take cues from the handler well? What’s his startle response like? Even more importantly, what’s his response when he’s purposely pushed to the point of stress?









My trainer purposefully created stress by incorporating several overwhelming noises and experiences, she said. Dogs barking, kids jumping and screaming and running past him, and loud noises all at once. In response to this, he showed a couple of very minor signs (yawning, licking his lips, and shaking off) but was easily redirected to the handler. Only once did he show this stress, and he also recovered quickly, which is what we would hope for.

What I wanted to know was how this guy handled anxiety. It’s an issue I deal with, and it’s very possible for a dog to pick up on a human’s anxiety, something that can ruin them for service dog work. (The last thing you want is a dog who becomes anxious in public if the handler is anxious, or worse yet, protective!) Of course, since I wasn’t there to radiate anxiety myself, my trainer faked some anxiety. The dog noticed and was attentive, but not to the point of being stressed by it or reactive to it. Wonderful!

Like most young dogs this age, he’s still a hyper puppy. When he’s not joyfully running around, he does problem solve well. Some of the things my trainer tested with him were finding a treat hidden under a cup, finding a toy, and figuring out what she wants from her cues and body language. Typically dogs work best for either treats, toys, or praise. For this boy, it’s the reward of treats or toys (play time) that motivate him the most.

It’s guessed that he is around 27 or 28 inches tall, meaning he’s tall and lanky for an adolescent. If he is indeed 27” at the withers, I could just about stand next to him without shoes and lay my hand flat on his back! This is also something I’d secretly hoped for in my future service dog.

I got the wonderful news on November 5^th that the dog was ready to go.

And better still, my dog trainer would be going to pick up this dog for me in three short days, very early in the morning on Sunday the 8^th! He turns a year old on November 11^th, and his birthday will be celebrated in his new home (for the next year, anyway) with my dog trainer. I know that I’ll certainly be celebrating from out here in California.

Say hello to Levi!

My Etsy Shops Featured on a Blog!

A generous blogger offered to feature my Etsy shops in her blog! I’m fundraising for my service dog through these Etsy shops, so I’m very excited about getting noticed more.

After about a decade of photography, I recently opened a second Etsy shop to sell my photography.

If anyone wants to check it out, her blog post is here.

What’s In a Name?

What’s in a name?

Quite a bit, actually. I’ve had a few pets over the years, and choosing their names was a long process for me. My cats were named Persia (female) and then later I adopted Phoenix (male). Of course, I came up with one or two well-used nicknames for each of them, and often wound up calling them by this instead of their real name.

Names are very important to me. For years I’ve kept a list in my head of names that I liked, and eventually I started writing them down. When I thought I would be working with a service dog program, in a situation where the fully-trained service dog would already come named, I worried.

What if I didn’t like the name? What if I outright hated it? What if it didn’t have any meaning to me? What if I didn’t feel that the dog’s name suited his or her personality?

All of that is solved by working with a private service dog trainer. I will be able to pick the name myself in this situation! Of course, I already have a few in mind, depending on the gender of the dog.

My trainer recommends that I work with a golden retriever. (For awhile we’d debated a standard poodle, but I prefer the feeling of a golden’s coat over the rougher curls of a poodle.) Goldens range in color from almost white to a rich mahogany, which will also factor into my name choice.

Male golden, any color: Levi.
Female golden, white to light in color: Skylar.
Female golden, medium to dark in color: Hazel.

Purebred puppies are also given with a registered name, a short phrase that usually ties into their regular name or the breeding kennel that they came from. Here Wikipedia has a brief synopsis on registered names. I am still working on this, but the followings are considerations for the registered name options.

Levi: “Riveted on You”
Skylar: “Reach for the Sky” or “Sky’s the Limit”
Hazel: “A Little Nutty” (Yes, this is a reference to Nutella)

An Update, Finally!

Well, it turns out that I’ll be working with an individual professional trainer instead of a full program to get my service dog. I will have a private trainer from the original program I’d been working with who will train my SD for me, so this is still someone I know and am familiar with.

My trainer says that she found someone to do the puppy raising portion of training! This means that there are no more hoops to jump through before assessing candidate puppies and purchasing one, aside from the small detail of fundraising! I’m so excited to learn that finally we can actually make some progress toward my ultimate goal! I’ve been waiting for a SD since spring 2011, I believe.

I am still fundraising through my Etsy shop, selling my handmade beaded jewelry.

Meeting the Rest of the Team

Last night I had the opportunity to talk to another member of the program who’ll be training my SD for me.  It’s amazing the kind of communication that Facebook allows!  I am feeling more and more confident without our decision to work together.  One of the women breeds German Shepherds, another trains dogs, and the third uses a SD herself.  Between the three of them, we’ll pick a good dog for my needs and have him (her?) trained to assist me in no time. 

In reality, we are looking at 12-18 months’ training time, and that’s after a SD candidate is chosen.  In the world of service dogs, that is actually quite fast.  Typically it takes two years from the birth of a puppy to it graduating as a ready-to-work SD.  My program places dogs who are 18 months to three years old at the time of placement with a handler, and I find that to be a reasonable age. 

I’m told there’s a pair of Golden Retriever puppies, littermates, who are being looked into.  I’m very excited to hear the results of their assessment!

And the Winner Is…. Number Thirty-Six!

To date, I have applied to over thirty service dog programs.  Number thirty-six was one of the few programs to accept me as a client and SD handler, and they’re the program I’m going to be using. (The other two programs which did accept me didn’t work out for various reasons.)  It’s taken a lot of work to finally find a program to work with, and more than a little patience.

It seems so simple, really: just apply and wait to hear back– surely someone would accept me out of the dozens of programs that exist in the United States!  Some programs simply ignored my application, or phone call, or email.  Others wrote back to tell me that they would not work with someone who had my diagnosis, or they could not/would not train the tasks that I knew I needed a service dog to do.  It was pretty discouraging, to be honest.

Almost exactly two years after I started the search, I found my program.  Based out of Boulder, CO, they’re just getting started as a non-profic, one of the few I’ve seen.  This program only asks the handler to pay their own transportation and lodging to and from Team Training, when I’ll spend two weeks learning to work with my new service dog.  They are looking for a SD candidate right now for me, along with putting up with my multiple “helpful” suggestions of dogs I come across.

Basic Commands the Dogs Are Taught

They say that the average dog has the intelligence of a two-year-old.  I don’t doubt that, especially after I heard the list of the things my program trains them to do!  This is just a list of the basic commands the SDs are taught.  It doesn’t include the disability-specific tasks and work that they do:

• Heel (heel on the left)
• Side (heel on the right)
• Behind (go behind me)
• Close (go in between legs)
• Sit (sit in location)
• Down (lie down in location)
• Stand (stand in location)
• Place (go to a specified place)
• Front (sit in front of me)
• Here (come)
• Stay (stay where they are)
• Under (go under something)
• Tuck (tuck tail/legs in)
• Through (go through a tight space)
• Over (jump over an object)
• Back (back up in the heel position)
• Forward (keep going forward)
• Left (move to the left)
• Right (move to the right)
• Wait (pause for more instructions)
• Load (get in a vehicle)
• In (go into an area or room)
• Out (go outside of a building)
• Free (release command to go play)
• Friends (go sit down for pets)
• Leave it (ignore an item, typically one on the floor)
• Drop on recall (freeze in position in the middle of coming)
• Target (touch an object with nose or paw)
• Kennel (go into their crate)