Hearing Dog Laney with her graduate, Katie. Laney can now alert Katie when her 18 month old baby is crying, the phone is ringing, a timer goes off and other sounds by nudging her and taking her to the source of the sound. And our school helped make this happen!!!!
Many of our Wilson students participated in Ashland's Fourth of July Parade, educating people and promoting disability awareness. We have been asked to do it again next summer!
In April we welcomed our fourth Puppy to Wilson. Pumpkin IV is a yellow lab and is already is on her way to being a service dog. She knew 12 commands by 3 months old!!! That is one smart 2nd grader!!!!!!
Canine Companions is a non-profit organization that provides service dogs to the disabled for FREE! It is strictly run through volunteers and donations. These dogs are given as hearing dogs, facility dogs, skilled companions to children with special needs and people with physical handicaps or in a wheel chair. Many of these dogs are also placed with disabled veterans and children with diabetes.
As a volunteer, I raise a CCI puppy from 2 months old to 20 months of age. With the support of my class and school we socialize her in the school setting and teach her 30 commands such as down, back, stand, turn, up, lap, visit and jump, to name a just a few. At 20 months of age, our dog is returned back to the CCI headquarters in Santa Rosa, California for 6 to 9 more months of advanced training. From there we keep our fingers crossed and hope that our puppy does well in "service dog college." I always cry tears of joy and pride when returning a puppy back in to CCI.
On February 13th, we turned Canada back into CCI for her advanced training. She was successful and participated in 6 months of advanced training. She will be matched with someone in November and will graduate as a real service dog!!!!