Dear Readers,
Four years ago if you were to ask me, “Do you think you family will ever get a dog?” I would have said something along the lines of, “ When Hell freezes over maybe!” I was a mom with a 4 year old a 3 year old and a 2 year old. At time’s I thought that I was going to go crazy, my youngest son was just assessed by the Public school system and found to fall on the spectrum of Autism and my 3 year old had, one year prior, been assessed and found to be on the spectrum. So here I am putting my two little boys on a public school bus to go to school every day for early intervention in hopes that we could in some way pull them out of their Autistic world. Soon after Kadin started going to school I had looked into the possibility of putting him in private O.T. and speech at Children’s Development and Rehabilitation in Saint Paul, I had been taking Tanner there for sometime and he seemed to be responding to the extra therapies. We started taking Kadin to Children’s and it is there that our journey to Can Do Canines and Truman really began. Kadin’s O.T. had asked me if I would be interested in trying a therapy dog at Kadin’s appointments. I told her that I thought that would be fine since he seemed to be extremely drawn to animals. I believe the whole therapy dog program was fairly new there and we were paired with a beautiful dog by the of Sasha. It took about 3 sessions with Sasha before Kadin started to interact with her. This was the first time that I had seen Kadin show interest in dogs. Sasha was a pure white Samoyed and Kadin loved to lay on her coat and run his fingers through her long hair. I noticed this to be very calming for him and eventually Sasha became more and more apart of the each session. Our family life was a whirlwind of therapies and school and meeting etc. But at some point during the craziness of it all the seed was planted and the thought of a dog crept into my mind. At this same time Kadin’s PCA had handed me a book she had just picked up by the name “A friend Like Henry” I read the book while we were on vacation that summer. I couldn’t help but see the similarities between Kadin and the little boy in the book. I believe it was shortly after reading the book that, while at Kadin’s O.T. apt., I asked his therapist if she knew if there was such a thing as a Autism Service dog. I believe she said she would look into it and in what seemed a short while down the road she handed me an article about a little boy who had received an Autism Service dog from an organization by the name of Hearing and Service Dogs of MN. I read the article and spoke with my husband and I filled out an application and sent it in. It did not seem long before we met with a trainer from the organization by the name of Julianne. A few weeks after our meeting we received a letter stating that Kadin was accepted into their program. Now that we were accepted it was time to hurry up and wait. The first year of waiting was very hard and Kadin’s behaviors started to escalate. I Remember on the anniversary of his acceptance I wrote an email to the organization and again stated that we were really excited about getting a dog etc. I was told it would be at least another year and so we got ready to wait again. The second year and a half went by fast we were involved in so much and now all three of my children were in school and our lives for the most part had gone on as before. In February of this year I received the phone call we had been waiting for, for so long. “Marjorie, I think we have a dog for Kadin, I have to tweak a few things but I think he will be ready in a couple months.” I hung up the phone and called my mom, my husband, brothers and sisters and close friends. I couldn’t believe that this was finally going to happen, I cried a lot mostly I think from the stress of waiting and the feeling of the thought that our family and Kadin would have a chance to do things that we couldn’t do before. This dog would change our lives not just Kadin’s. As it turned out the dog that they had in mind turned up to have a medical issue and it needed to be re assigned. I met Truman on July 7th, 2011 and from the moment I saw him I was amazed by his eye contact and his calm stature. I agreed to work with him and I think we bonded very quickly. Truman was placed in our home August 11th, 2011 and the following week we began Kadin’s training.
September 17th,2011 we are certified as a team and now are allowed to take Truman with us were ever we go. This has been such a long journey and now I hope to get on with our lives and see the great things that are sure to come.
Much love!
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