We are officially through the application and interview process and are now active clients so Let the fundraising begin! 

Let me start this off by telling you a little bit about our Boone. He just turned 7 in February. Therapy wise He is currently in ABA 5 times a week, plus speech snd OT twice a week all while in his kindergarten year. He is level 3 autistic and non verbal. We are in the depths of a lot of medical testing due to seizure activity and abnormal brain MRIs. BUT our boy is so much more than all of that. He loves music and will hum along to all his favorites. He loves being outside to hear himself echo while running free. If there is fireworks, you will find him front row for the show. You will never catch him without a fistful of glowsticks. He is a mamas boy through and through. I could write novels about him but That’s just a few to get to know him if you don’t. 

Unfortunately with along with boones disabilities, comes many challenges which leads us here. Our biggest concern is Boone is a huge elopement risk. He runs for many reasons ranging from something catching his eye to getting away from something or someone. He does this without any hesitation and without looking for dangers (traffic,people,landscape, and so much more). It’s terrifying every single time it happens and he has gotten away from us multiple times. When he gets away in the blink of an eye, he can’t call out and respond to tell us where he is. He also has self injuring behaviors when frustrated or overwhelmed. This is a frequent occurrence recently with all of the dr appointments and trip we are having to take for medical reasons. And than we have the seizures. His last seizure was a 14 minute grand mal seizure completely unprovoked. We know this can happen again at any moment. 

With the service dog, our lives could change in so many ways. The dog would be trained to be tethered to Boone at all times in public and trained in search and rescue if he was to get away from us and the dog. The dog could also provide behavior disruption him with the self injuring behaviors and anxiety he gets in new places with deep pressure and companionship. With the seizures it will be trained to alert us at any sign of seizure activity. This dog will be a huge thing for our Boone and our family. Please reach out if you have any questions. We are more than happy to answer any and all. If you made it this far I thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. We appreciate any and all donations.

Training a service dog to meet our child’s requirements can be very costly. On average it costs between $40,000-60,000 to raise, train, and place a service dog at 4 Paws for Ability. While 4 Paws for Ability fundraises to help cover a significant portion of this cost, families are tasked with raising $20,000 of that amount or $23,000 if receiving a poodle, doodle or papillon. We hope that we can receive assistance from our beloved family and friends to help make our service dog dream a reality.