i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

Okay, so. As you may or may not know, I got my current service dog, Yahtzee, in 2011. (See tag "dog adventures of 2011" for more details as desired.) He is now ten, and while he is still quite puppyish sometimes, he is showing his age a bit. Napping a lot, and sometimes being reluctant to go places.

I've been low-key trying for the past year or two to figure out how (and when) to get a replacement service dog. The when is hard because ideally the replacement would be ready when Y is ready to retire, but I can make educated guesses. The how is significantly harder. I couldn't get a dog from the same place as Y because they require a two week stay in Santa Rosa, and while I could (barely) manage that eight years ago, I can't travel now. Many other agencies require the client to come to them. Plus, there's the timing thing: even once I was accepted at the place I got Y from, had done all the interviews and screening, and was on the "to get a dog" list, it took five years.

The other option was getting a dog (probably a puppy) and hiring someone to train it up as a service dog. Sort of like an owner-trained service dog (which is a Thing) except I can't do any training really. Up side is I'd be involved with the training from the beginning, so it could be trained exactly to my needs, and the timing would be more obvious. Down side is it's more expensive (many agencies don't charge the full cost to clients, using donations to supplement) and there's no backup if the dog doesn't work out.

Anyway. About two months ago, one of my very good RL friends, L, mentioned that she had a friend who bred service dogs, that happened to just have a litter (of 11 puppies, yikes!). I said, half jokingly, "I don't suppose she has any openings".

She didn't, but I was first on the waiting list.

And then someone cancelled. So one of the boys could be mine.

(!!!)

Now, me being able to take the puppy was entirely dependent on being able to find someone to raise/train him. Seemed impossible, especially on short notice. But the breeder was willing to be patient and keep me on maybe status. And ... I'm not sure if it was L who had the contacts, or L's breeder friend, but L and I got some suggestions, and one of them was available, and interested. And slowly, over the course of a few weeks, it went from "this will never work" to "this might work" to "holy shit this might actually be happening".

...it was of course absolute torture for me not being able to tell everyone and their cousin, because OMG SERVICE PUPPY, but I didn't want to jinx anything. And I didn't want to get people all excited for me and then have it not work. And so I had to stay utterly silent until it was about 99% probable.

(It is at this point 100% happening. ::hyperventilates a bit::)

Someone related to the breeder has been posting puppy pictures on social media -- goldenvillage_retrievers and nala.goldenvillage -- which is just chock full of adorableness. The dogs are cream-colored English golden retrievers, of a lineage with lots of service dogs; the mom (Willow) and grandma (Nala) are both quite pretty. The pups are too puppyish to be pretty, but omg the cute!

I also got to go visit at around six weeks. This was Dec 1 -- for those of you that read the health saga, this was the thing a week after I got sick and about four hours before I spiked the high fever -- and it was also raining somewhat but I was not going to miss the visit for the world.

A couple pics below the cut:

( Read more... )

Unexpected benefit of doing the puppy-plus-trainer route: I got to pick a forever name for him! For the first six weeks they were identified by "collar" color, e.g. Mr. Red, Ms. Lavender, Sherbert for the orange collar. My little dude was Mr. Paws, because the ribbon was black with gold paw prints. I am probably going to keep Mr. Paws as at least a nickname for him. However, I decided on Chess as his main name. It keeps the game theme (Yahtzee), it's short and easy, it's got a good feel as a command-name ... plus, now I'll have a black dog and a white dog, so quite suitable for Chess! ;)

The puppies are going to their new homes this week. Chess' adventure is tomorrow; the trainer will be going to get him from the breeder, and then coming to my place to introduce him to Yahtzee and to see me again and to let him see the environment he will eventually be living in. (I can't deal with puppy full time, of course, so he'll be living with the trainer for the next 12-18 months, but with *at least* two visits a month, probably more like once a week, so that he gets a chance to know me and work with me.)

There will, of course, be pictures :D

Now for the awkward bit: you know how I mentioned that the puppy-plus-private-trainer route costs more? Total cost is approximately $20,000. Which is a) a lot of money, b) especially since my benefits are dependent on me having less than $2000 total assets. (Medical equipment doesn't count so *owning* the dog is fine, but I can't exactly save up.)

Because of this, and because I have a lot of friends elsesite that expressed interest in helping out with the financial aspect, I set up a GoFundMe. I do not want anyone to feel obligated to help, but if you have any interest in donating, I will be forever grateful. Every little bit helps! (And yes, I know GFM has fees, but the alternative sites I investigated had higher fees.) Or if you have Facebook, sharing Yahtzee's post so it (and the gfm link) reach wider audiences? Also helpful, and doesn't even cost anything :)

(Annoyingly, because my dad is handling the financial backend of the gfm -- necessary because benefits -- it says that I'm raising money for him. That's not the situation, but gfm support was not very helpful. Sigh.)

Okay, enough begging-for-monies. Hopefully I will have cute-as-fuck pics and anecdotes after tomorrow!