Chapter 1 Who can resist puppies? When they are yet bundles of fluff, lapping tongues, and ears too big for their uncoordinated bodies, these puppies are evaluated for the potential to serve as the eyes, ears, hands, feet, or lifelines for people with disabilities. What goes into that evaluation process? Why do puppy raisers get involved? What do puppy raisers do? How do they find it in their hearts to give up the puppies they cherished for a year or more? How do the puppies respond to everything that is expected of them? Hear the stories of the puppies who may go on to change lives as future assistance dogs, and read the words of the people who cherish these youngsters when their world is new and fresh. Among the pieces in this chapter, you will read about puppies who barked raucously at the church choir, stirred up unique reactions at a license branch, decided that golf clubs were mortal enemies, and found a way to teach life-changing lessons to a prison inmate who discovered purpose for the first time in his life. Chapter 1 charts the first steps of an amazing journey.
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Chapter 2 When dogs return to the schools for formal training between one and two years of age, a transformation occurs. Those who make the cut (typically fewer than 50%) experience the rigors and revelations of training, meant to prepare them for anything. But, when that new partnership is formed, everything changes. What is it like for someone with a disability to meet his or her new canine partner for the first time? What is that first outing like? On these pages, you will read about a blind man taking his first walk with a guide dog less than a year after a car hit him while he was crossing a road, a woman with cerebral palsy whose dog has more fun steeling other dogs’ leashes during training than working for his new partner, a diabetic who discovers that his guide dog can detect his plunging blood sugar just weeks after they come home from training, and a woman from Poland who brings a guide dog into a country where such canines are a big unknown. Illuminating this highly charged time, Chapter 2 is unforgettable with emotional and practical insights into a magical and trying time for everyone, human and canine alike.
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Chapter 3 What is daily life like for people who are in a wheelchair, are blind, have epilepsy, or are deaf when there is an assistance dog with them? How do these dogs help a child with autism or a woman with uncontrolled diabetes? What you will discover in Chapter 3 is that life doesn’t end when disability takes up residence in a person’s world. The combined result of trained canines and people with disabilities can mean a productive and purposeful life. Meet Rebecca and Daisy who navigate the complex subway system of Washington DC daily in spite of her blindness, Michael and Conan who together confront the challenge of a degenerative muscle disease, Kay and Rufus who can shop at Sam’s Club because Rufus’s presence quells the panic attacks that once plagued Kay, and Paulette and Radar who could walk across a wooden draw bridge with a group of home school children even though Paulette can’t see the swaying planks beneath her feet. Chapter 3 showcases the practical and dependable functionality of a team when things are clicking and daily life is suddenly more livable.
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Chapter 4 It isn’t ever perfect. It isn’t without trials. It isn’t always glorious. Because the humans and the dogs are both imperfect, the partnerships aren’t like high tech computers that whizz along without error. They crash sometimes, and sometimes, those crashes are devastating. Problems crop up with assistance dog teams, without question. How handlers and their dogs deal with them is the real story. When complications threaten the partnership, what happens? When people themselves come face-to-face with problems tied to their disabilities or tied to being human beings alive on this earth, what happens to the partnership? Here you will read about a blind man and his guide dog who hear two men discussing a planned attack on him, the veterinarian whose stroke profoundly changes her career and creates her own need for a service dog, the assistance dog who is severely injured by an escalator, and the blind woman who has to navigate urban streets with her guide dog during a blizzard. Problems are reality, and they don’t bypass assistance dog teams. Chapter 4’s honesty makes for compelling reading.
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Chapter 5 You just have to chuckle now and then! This chapter will have you laughing out loud with every turn of the page. The funny situations that assistance dog teams encounter are as memorable as the dogs themselves. After all, they are still dogs. No amount of training will coax basic instincts away from them. That includes curiosity about all things that can fit in a doggie mouth, reactions to situations unique to assistance dogs because of their right to go everywhere with their person, and surprising bursts of doggie habits that can’t be curbed by any amount of training, to name a few. Pair the mischievous spirit of a dog with the comic moments that disability often fosters, and you have this chapter, brimming with giggles, snorts, barks, bloopers, and an all-out blitz of hilarity! Heave out a “ho-ho-ho” for the dog who breaks loose at Disney World, carries a special and disgusting surprise in his mouth all the way across a busy college campus without his blind handler knowing it, decides that a special little bunny needs rescuing from a gang of cats, and displays a unique spirituality while her minister handler conducts a funeral! Chapter 5 mandates eruptions of grins on all readers’ faces.
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Chapter 6 When it comes down to it, there must be perseverance and a willingness to problem-solve, if successful partnerships are to be. The truest test of any team is the discovery of this quality. People with disabilities are already forced to cope with odds stacked against them. To succeed, they must be willing to fight on a long-term basis for what they need. When commitment shapes itself into the incredible synthesis that these teams can experience, it is unforgettable. Dogs accompany a paralyzed man to a crowded public middle school every day so the man can teach math, join a blind woman as they travel across the world to a new life in Australia, empower a young woman after one fateful dive into the ocean changed everything in her life, and lead a blind handler straight to Santa Claus without any prompting at all. Chapter 6 showcases these teams and more, trumpeting how commitment transfers into success, with spine-tingling, mental blue ribbons at every turn.
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Chapter 7 This too shall pass. At the end of a working partnership lies retirement. Sometimes, retirement is supplanted by death. The goodbyes are not easy, no matter the reason. Dog lovers know that the hardest part of having a dog is letting it go. Chapter 7 is perhaps the most poignant chapter in the book, the one that speaks of how we love and how we grieve. Magnify pure love of dogs with the special bond that a working team has, and you have writings that will leave no tears unshed. Witness the reflections of a blind woman walking her retired guide dog who is no longer responsible for her safety, the tears of a high school teacher releasing her first assistance dog from the brutality of lymphoma, the shock of a woman whose dog collapses while working on the crowded streets of South Africa, and the sorrow of a handler whose seizure response dog is diagnosed with a brain tumor at the age of only two. Chapter 7 reaches to the deepest places that love carves out in the human heart and leaves behind pages, dampened by tears, as a lasting memorial to endings.
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Chapter 8 But, when the sun sets, it is preparing also to rise. Hope and new beginnings lie waiting. Chapter 8 closes the book with an uplifting note of inspiration. Where once there was love and partnership, there can be love and partnership again. With each pant and paw print, there is a new beginning waiting to unfold. When life seems too empty to even contemplate new beginnings, a wagging tail can make the difference. Rejoice in the courage of a man who is both paralyzed and blind fighting to convince a school to train a special dog to help him, a psychologist safely navigating the congested streets of Italy with a beloved friend by her side, a woman ready to carry on after domestic violence left her with a debilitating seizure disorder, and a Holocaust survivor who witnessed dogs tear prisoners apart discovering the courage to fill out an application for a guide dog school, at the age of eighty-seven. The sun always rises indeed, and Chapter 8 will prove that every sunrise is more beautiful when it is shared with a four-legged friend.
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