Day 16: Troy's sponsor!

Today was another fairly low key day. Everyone is really tired and just ready to go home. We have learned all of the commands and skills so for the next few days we are focusing on practicing what we feel we need to work on the most and talking about caring for our service dogs, travelling, going home, etc.

Today was also very sad for our service dog class. One of our class members will not be graduating with us and is leaving tomorrow morning. His dog was not cooperating the way we had all hoped and will be going through some more training after the holidays before the school makes a decision regarding the dog's working life. The dog may be placed with a different handler in the same program, a different program, or the dog may be "disqualified" and sent to a loving family to be cared for. We all feel terrible for both out class mate and for the dog but life must go on and it's better to go home without a service dog than to go home with one that won't listen and/or could possibly put you in danger.

We had some guest speakers come in throughout the morning and afternoon to talk about travelling with a dog guide, fundraising and sponsors, and media. We also talked about laws and human rights for service dog owners.

The afternoon was exciting for Troy and I because we found out that he is sponsored and we got to find out who his sponsor was! Troy's sponsor is the Hamilton Masons. A few members will be attending the graduation this Thursday so we will get to meet them and they asked if they could take a picture of Troy and I for their website. The Hamilton Masons also sponsored a dog in the seizure response program named Winn-Dixie (Dixie for short). Each service dog costs 25 thousand dollars to train but that can be a lot of money for one person or company to raise so the lions foundation asks a sponsor for 10 thousand per service dog. This is still a very large amount of money and the amount to sponsor a dog varies depending on which program the dog is in (it ranges from 8-12 thousand dollars). I am extremely grateful for their donation/sponsorship of Troy and I am sure Winn-Dixie's handler is grateful as well.

The rest of the day was spent practicing some more fetches and down stays. We didn't get to go outside for very long today as it was raining so we had a good play time session tonight.

Here's a really cute (and slightly annoying) video of Troy playing with a squeaky toy. It looks like those are his favourite toys now. He especially likes soft and squeaky ones!

If the weather is nicer tomorrow I'm sure we will take a walk outside to work on some more distraction stuff but other than that I think it will just be another relaxing day (which is more than fine by me). Everyone is tired and since we don't have anything new to learn it's pretty much the end of training! I am excited to go home but also kind of nervous because you never know how the dog will react to the change. Hopefully his behavior doesn't decline too drastically. I'm sure we won't have a problem because he is such a gentle boy and very well behaved but I won't know what will happen until I'm home...