As I have mentioned elsewhere, we are getting a service dog for my daughter. The process starts with choosing a suitable puppy which then has to go into training. Yesterday we went to the breeder to complete the adoption process. My daughter had done her research, found a breeder not to far away with puppies of a breed she wanted (Australian Shepherd), that had a litter close to ready for adoption. So we started fundraising and were able to complete the adoption. Athena named the puppy “Dango” (a Japanese sweet).
This was an opportunity for Athena to actually meet the puppy for the first time. But first, we had to corral a couple of escapees who took the opportunity of the opening of the door to go exploring. Video of her first meeting (along with some of the corralling effort) here:
You can see that Athena’s almost in tears as the breeder’s husband hands Dango to her.
After the video, I grabbed a few more pictures.
We still need to raise money for the training. Dango is intended as a fully trained and certified service dog to assist Athena with issues related to PTSD. This requires extensive training that does not come cheap and which insurance does not cover. If you can find it in your hear to help, you can find the fundraiser here. Every little bit helps, even if it’s just helping to spread the word.
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For some reason, I had thought she was going to get a miniature Shepard, but a full sized one is better. Good that she has an eternal friend there, one that she can always count on.
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Sort of tangential subject – can you recommend any good books on understanding PTSD?
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I got a couple of books on the subject, mostly for purposes of story research (I was actually looking at this before I learned about my daughter’s issues):
Fields of Combat: Understanding PTSD among Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan (The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work): https://amzn.to/2tLqk9L
Understanding Combat Related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: https://amzn.to/34U7lXb
One that was also recommended to me, a fictional (science fiction) account but useful for seeing PTSD from inside the head of folk suffering from it
Redliners by David Drake (himself a combat veteran of Vietnam) https://amzn.to/2s5mMig
And now I’ll have to go fish this out of “spam” for having multiple links in one comment. 😉
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