Superdog!

Well hello there, gentle readers! Long time no...type! I'm terribly sorry for the long hiatus. A lot of exciting things have happened to our little band of misfits over the past couple of months and I will be returning later this week to regale you with our hijinks (and a long-awaited update to the Righting the Redneckery series!).

Today, though, I'm coming to ask a big favor. I mentioned awhile back that we were looking into getting a service dog for the Boog to help with certain troubling symptoms of his autism and epilepsy. Well, we've done it! We don't have doggy in hand yet (well, in home, I'm guessing it'll be too big to fit in my hand, unless he gets some sort of genetically mutated mini-dog, which, while theoretically adorable, would probably not be terribly helpful for these purposes...as usual, I digress), but the good folks over at Wilderwood Service Dogs in Maryville, TN are working on finding the right match for our Boog and training the dog to meet his particular needs.

I talked about this a bit in previous blogs, but this dog, once trained, will really be a superhero for our family. Superdog will be able to keep the Boog from wandering off and getting lost or hurt (this one is especially important to me. Do you know how many autistic children wander away from their homes and get hurt or killed? It's absolutely heartbreaking). Superdog will help him focus during therapy and "homework" sessions by interrupting his self-stimulatory patterns. Superdog will be an excellent social bridge through which Ry can begin to build relationships with others and just a good pal to cuddle with when he wants to be alone but still needs a little bit of company (currently my ancient and evil cat, Tobi is serving this purpose, but she is, as aforementioned, ancient and though I am thoroughly convinced her pure evilness will preserve her forever, still it's good to have a backup). But most importantly, Superdog will learn the signs the Boog exhibits when he's about to have a seizure and will be trained to alert us. This is huge, because, though he hasn't had one in a couple of months now (YAY!), his seizures can be very dangerous. He often vomits during them and he's usually laying down when they happen. If this happened in the middle of the night and we were asleep, he could choke, which is just the most terrible, terrible thing to think of. With Superdog in our house, we can rest a little easier knowing we will have an extra safety measure in place during Ry's seizure cycles.

And, of course, Superdog will be faster than a speeding bullet and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Just kidding. Wilderwood in no way promised us the dog will have actual superpowers. But s/he will do all that other stuff I mentioned.

So, where's the catch, Meg? Well, service dogs ain't cheap. Wilderwood is a non-profit and as such charges a heck of a lot less than for-profit service dog organizations, but we still need to come up with $12,000 and fast. We've put down $1000 deposit already, but we have $5000 due by September 1 and the remaining $6000 by December 1.

So we need a little help. If Boog's story has resonated with you and you have the means, please consider donating to his service dog fund. If you don't have the dough but would be willing to share this blog or his gofundme page (which I'll link below), we'd love it if you did that. Prayers, happy thoughts, white light, interpretive dance and anything else you want to send out into the Universe in his honor are also greatly appreciated. I can't wait to get Superdog home and post pictures of him/her and my SuperBoog in matching capes!

Thanks for reading, as always, and I'll be back to the blog later this week!

Here's my buddy in case you need a little cuteness in your day:





GoFundMe site:

http://www.gofundme.com/3anwec?preview=1